Echeria Coli Co-Opted To Make Gasoline 331
Flask_Man writes "Technology Review has an article about a small biotech company in the Silicon Valley that has successfully produced renewable gasoline from genetically modified bacteria, including the nefarious E.Coli bacteria. A pilot plant is slated to be constructed in California in 2008, and it is claimed that hundreds of different hydrocarbon molecules are capable of being produced. The modified bacteria make and excrete hydrocarbon molecules that are the length and molecular structure the company desires. From the article: 'To do this, the company is employing tools from the field of synthetic biology to modify the genetic pathways that bacteria, plants, and animals use to make fatty acids, one of the main ways that organisms store energy. Fatty acids are chains of carbon and hydrogen atoms strung together in a particular arrangement, with a carboxylic acid group made of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen attached at one end. Take away the acid, and you're left with a hydrocarbon that can be made into fuel.'" We discussed something similar to this earlier this year.
So this is what (Score:3, Funny)
Re:So this is what (Score:4, Funny)
You do what you have to for your survival, and I'll do what I have to to maintain my pathetic dependence on petrol!
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raising the tax would discourage SUV owners the least. when you're driving around in a $65,000 cadillac escalade, you've already demonstrated you don't have any understanding of cost. charging $4.50 instead of $3.50 a gallon is not likely to affect you either.
raising fuel taxes is, however, realistically likely to break the bank for folks who are already driving used economy cars because that's all they can afford.
a more appropriate approach would be to simply regulate the vehicles off the road by passi
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But why would we have to do that? If we can find ways like the e coli methods in the article to make gasoline which is renewable....and gets the US off the ME 'teet'...why do we have to worry about gas guzzlers? I'm not a fan of SUV's myself, but, I do like fast cars with powerful engines. I'd be looking forward to more fun cars coming back on the market.
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While that is not one of my concerns....it has been pointed out in other posts, that the carbon produced this way is already 'above ground'...so therefore, not adding to the to the atmosphere any new carbon from underground
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The only reason our CO emissions are a problem is that we are digging up carbon that has been buried for years, and releasing it into the air.
Any form of renewable gas (ethonal, weird bacteria, etc) have to get the carbon from SOMEWHERE. In the case of plant based sources it gets it from the air the plants breath and store in the sugar. I would assume that the bacteria are getting it from the same place. Either from the sugar they are fed so they can produce this stuff, or from
Re:So this is what (Score:4, Informative)
Everything that extracts carbon from the atmosphere helps reduce global warming. The bacteria don't invent the carbon. They have to get it from somewhere.
Global warming happens because people are taking huge masses of carbon that's stored for millions years under the ground and release it to the atmosphere.
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Re:So this is what (Score:5, Funny)
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Del Cardayre estimates that cellulosic biomass could produce about 2,000 gallons of renewable petroleum per acre.
or this:
Producing hydrocarbon fuels is more efficient than producing ethanol, del Cardayre adds, because the former packs about 30 percent more energy per gallon. And it takes less energy to produce, too. The ethanol produced by yeast needs to be distilled to remove the water, so ethanol production requires 65 percent more energy than hydrocarbon production does.
you may realize that after everything is up and running the price would actually be better than ethanol because it doesn't need to be processed.
Re:So this is what (Score:4, Informative)
1 gallon of gasoline is equivalent to 33.53 kWh [nafa.org]. 2000 gallons is 67,060 kWh of energy.
100 watts of sunlight per square foot times 43,560 sq.ft. per acre gives 4,356,000 watts per acre, or 4,365 kW per hour.So every 15 hours of peak sunlight conditions the energy equivalent of 2000 gallons of gasoline hits the ground. That's about three sunny days worth.
Killing off a large portion of that due to various inefficiencies... a 5% overall efficiency and you get 2000 gallons per acre year. That's not too bad, and is better than most vegitable oil yields for any crop I can think of by a factor of almost 2. (Algae not included)
Offhand this seems like a reasonable solution. Combine with other technologies and I can see us eventually replacing conventional petrolium fuels... someone check my math!
=Smidge=
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In cases where the crop takes multiple years to mature or is a perennial (this is the case for most of the crops which could be efficiently used to produce cellulose like miscanthus [wikipedia.org] and short rotation coppice [wikipedia.org]) it is usually given as the average yield over the expected lifetime of the crop.
Between miscanthus and sort rotation coppice my personal choice
Re:So this is what (Score:4, Interesting)
The US uses roughly 20 million barrels of oil per day.
A refinery produces roughly 20 gallons of gasoline per barrel, giving 400 million gallons of gasoline per day.
Per year, this works out at 146 billion gallons.
At 2,000 gallons per acre (presumably per annum), you would need 73 million acres of land to meet these needs.
According to the CIA Factbook, the USA has an area of 9,826,630 square kilometres, which works out to 2428213150 acres.
In order to meet the current needs of the USA, 3% of the landmass would have to be dedicated to growing fuel crops. I might have missed a significant figure somewhere here, because this seems like a much smaller amount than I would have guessed.
No, it's free, but you gotta barter for it (Score:2)
Obligatory Mad Max Quote:
It's a bit cheaper than that (Score:2)
"Echeria Coli"? What the hell is that? (Score:4, Informative)
-ben
and "nefarious"? (Score:5, Funny)
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You say that like they haven't been doing that all along.
Re:"Echeria Coli"? What the hell is that? (Score:4, Funny)
You must be new here.
Questions of feedstock (Score:5, Informative)
That out of the way, this is obviously promising work. After all, there's nothing inherently wrong with burning hydrocarbons as a fuel - if we can get around the problems of increasing atmospheric carbon and the finite supply of said hydrocarbons. Yes, a more efficient solar-to-kinetic/electrical/thermal energy conversion process would be better, but I don't think the development of such a technology will be hindered by making it feasible to extend the use of hydrocarbons (I believe it was Larry Burns who said, "the stone age didn't end because we ran out of stones."). A gap technology that staved off the critical problems of hydrocarbon dependence would give us breathing room to pursue work on other technologies.
After all, while nothing may focus the mind like the prospect of being hanged in the morning, of the focused mind can't avoid the hanging, it doesn't matter.
All that being said, what would make a technology like this almost utopian in aspect would be the creation of a feedstock that can be grown on the surface of the ocean. There's (obviously) far more oceanic surface area than arable land area; using that would completely solve the problem of competing with food crops.
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Hey, if it's all being bioengineered, why not make migratory plants? In the winter, they all swim in to shore to be harvested. Sky's the limit, right? Or perhaps we just engineer them to clump into miles-wide clusters, and throw a hook or two in to tow the whole thing to shore.
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Hey, if it's all being bioengineered, why not make migratory plants?
1. Migratory plants are usually algae, and
2. Yes, we can do that (i.e. tweak algal DNA to produce specific molecules), but...
3. It's a lot harder to insert useful sequences into the DNA of a eukaryotic (i.e. plant, fungal or animal) cell than it is to do the same with a prokaryotic (bacterial) cell. E. coli tends to be the whipping-boy of molecular biologists since its biochemistry is so well-researched, so it is the obvious choice fo
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Ocean farming is an interesting idea. If the bacteria could be in some form where their remains sank to the ocean floor when they died it would also provide a carbon sink mechanism for removing excess CO2.
Re:Questions of feedstock (Score:4, Funny)
Humans are Mother Nature's way of getting her carbon out of the ground and back into circulation.
/kidding
//sort of
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I guess the next step would be to make an algae that could do the same thing.
As long as they didn't get loose in the environment it could be a good thing. If they did it could be very bad.
Rivers of petrol... (Score:2)
Re:Rivers of petrol... (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Questions of feedstock (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, so aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play? Efficiently converting cellulose to sugar is one of the big problems in biofuels; converting sugar to fuels is relatively easy. It's nice to get gasoline instead of alcohol, but it doesn't solve the fundamental issues.
Were we go with the tired old "feedstock" argument (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a tired argument already. Soybeans are an important feedstock, and have long been used heavily in the production of non-foodstuffs such as plastics, waxes, industrial lubricants, etc. The same thing goes for oilseeds like Canola. Just because it is edible doesn't make it a sin to use it for non-food purposes (it might be considered a good thing, as we know its toxicity is limited). As long as we explore a multitude of energy sources there isn't really a problem with *edible* energy sources (after all, our bodies are mechanisms powered 100 percent by edible energy sources
After all, there's nothing inherently wrong with burning hydrocarbons as a fuel - if we can get around the problems of increasing atmospheric carbon and the finite supply of said hydrocarbons.
Well, pretty much ANYTHING we grow gets the bulk of its carbon from the atmosphere during photosynthesis so I'd say that problem is gotten around pretty well if we can use plant matter as fuel (well, plant matter that hasn't been trapped underground since dinosaurs roamed the earth anyways).
Yes, a more efficient solar-to-kinetic/electrical/thermal energy conversion process would be better
Ultimately even conventional oil is "solar conversion", albeit inefficient since we are releasing soalr energy that was collected, stored and converted underground by natural processes over millions of years. Anyways, what man-made technology we have to collect solar energy totally sucks when compared with the efficiency of photosynthesis. Then there is the question of storage. In much of the world, much of the time, solar energy is most abundant when energy consumption is the lowest, so storage is very important. How do you store solar energy? You can't really store light, and storing heat on a large enough scale is very difficult as well (drill deep into the ground, or store it as huge tanks of hot water, etc). Large-scale storage of kinetic energy is difficult too. Then there is electricity--besides the fact that solar cells are very inefficient the batteries contain environmental toxins and all batteries "leak" to some degree (lose charge).
If we let mother nature collect the solar energy and help it along (through biotechnology) to convert it to petroleum then we can take advantage of a storage and delivery infrastructure that has been gradually built up over more than a century, and the challenges remain the same (efficient release of the stored energy).
All that being said, what would make a technology like this almost utopian in aspect would be the creation of a feedstock that can be grown on the surface of the ocean.
Don't underestimate the ability of humans to mess up the ecosystem. Humans have already messed up out ocean-bound feedstock--that being the fisheries. Wouldn't there be some consequence to growing crap on the surface of the ocean? I'd imagine that might deprive sea life at shallower depths of needed sunlight.
That said, the ocean definitely has a much less limited capacity to supply our energy needs. There is the capture of kinetic energy using big wave-riding mechanical "snakes" already. There is also a LOT of kelp and plankton that is in and under the water that could be used by this bacterial process. Better to dilute our impact on the ecosystem through the entire volume of the ocean and use multiple means of collecting energy, rather than concentrate it on the surface of the ocean where its effects would be felt more acutely.
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Insofar as this can be scaled out to real production, it addresses both problems with burning gasoline: the finite supply of petroleum, as well as the introduction of "new" carbon to the atmosphere.
Re:Questions of feedstock (Score:5, Informative)
For instance, if they feed the bacteria corn syrup, the carbon that will go into the gasoline comes from the CO2 absorbed by the corn from the atmosphere.
It's OK to put CO2 into the atmosphere as long as it came from the atmosphere to begin with. That's why ethanol is "cleaner" than gasoline - it's carbon neutral. Compare this with releasing as CO2 the carbon that has been stored in oil and coal reserves for millions of years.
Symptoms of infection include: (Score:5, Funny)
1) High fever
2) General listlessness.
3) Urinating gasoline.
Re:Symptoms of infection include: (Score:4, Funny)
Flatulence, not urination. (Score:2)
Hundreds of frat brothers discover the party entertainment potential of lighting their urine streams on fire.
E Coli live in the bowels, not in the kidneys or the bladder.
Think lighting farts with a match.
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Not sure I'd want to poop fireballs either though.
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MadCow
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Doctors advice:
1. take asprin
2. don't drive
3. avoid the electric fence
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Oi, this gives new meaning to the already troubled phrase "Freak gasoline fight accident."
Wonder what would happen ... (Score:2)
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I think the parent was envisioning millions of hectares of wild grasses, as flammable as gasoline...
Grasses that biodegrade plastic, good.
Gasoline wildfires the size of Kansas, not so good.
Ringworld collapse, plastics eating bacteria ... (Score:2)
Civilization would probably collapse, if not immediately, then probably after a relatively short time span. Other plastics in the field would break down, UV gets reflected like visible light, is sweat different e
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Dupe! (Score:5, Funny)
Curious... (Score:4, Interesting)
If you can keep the bugs alive in the media and the desired product then your output will be far higher than when the bugs end up killing themselves quickly.
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So how do they get past the fact that e.Coli dies in gasoline? how did they change the bug to have a higher tolerance to their new unnatural excretions?
Science.
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Yeast die in alcohol (Score:4, Insightful)
Right around 12-14% concentration, which is what wine is.
Basically, the yeast die out when their own waste product strangles them out of their environment. Sort of like if you put a person in a perfectly airtight plastic bag. They'd live a while until their own co2 strangled them.
Probably the same with these little gasoline critters. Soon as their waste product reaches a toxic level for them, they croak.
"nefarious E.Coli" (Score:5, Insightful)
however, we often hear e coli in the news in connection with lethal outbreaks, and this is due to another strain of e coli getting into our guts, usually one or another that produces toxins, including some that shut down the kidneys permanently
yes, these strains are ugly, but the scientific truth is that e coli is not nefarious, and in fact is almost as vital to us being human as our own cells
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they're using the laboratory strain (Score:5, Informative)
the wild type e coli has a saccharide coat which helps it survive the human and animal immune system. the laboratory strain, not faced with this kind of attack, has lost this ability because its a very expensive to produce, this saccharide. so after many generations and natural mutations, a variety of e coli without a saccharide coating came to dominate in the laboratory, because it could grow faster and outcompete the wild kind with the expensive immune system fighting saccaride coat that also makes it grow slower
however, bacteria have sex (no, really) and exchange genetic information with other bacteria (in fact, sometimes totally different species). such that anything introduced into e coli in the lab could wind up in wild e coli, and visa versa. antibiotic resistance is one such genetic trick that bacteria freely trade with each other in the wild and evolved in the wild. however, just like the saccharide coat, extra gene tricks incur a production cost that slows reproduction, such that e coli without extra genes always win out in the end (unless they are in hostile environments that require the expensive protective gene to survive)
well (Score:3, Insightful)
same with e coli. with all of the bad that certain e coli do considered, 99% of e coli's role in humanity is still best described as an indispensable part of our daily lives. such that, while you can call certain strains of e coli unmitigated evil, e coli itself is most definitely not nefarious
Don't malign the E. Coli (Score:2)
This Just In!!!!! (Score:2)
like any gasoline replacement (Score:4, Insightful)
of course that is getting more and more expensive, but most schemes for the replacement of gasoline are still orders of nagitude more expensive such that they aren't at the economic break even point on replacing gasoline
this e coli step is of course a wonderful development, but you have to ask what the cost of the stuff is that the e coli is eating to process into gasoline: not cheaper than digging gas out of the ground
the ideal would be a creature, probably a bioengineered algae, that produces octane after exposure to sunlight. the e coli is merely a processing step on a larger chain of energy. sich a hypothetical algae would be the whole process in one little cell
something that takes sunlight and produces it directly into gasoline, that would be the ultimate killer app of our time
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you're ignorant on the science (Score:5, Informative)
i don't have to talk about this in the abstract, this is observed in e coli
e coli is a biotech workhorse because its a very simple organism that is very easy to modify genetically. the laboratory strain of e coli has lost its ability to live inside people and animals. this lost ability was not done purposefully by scientists, but evolved naturally
the wild type e coli has a saccharide coat which helps it survive the human and animal immune system. the laboratory strain, not faced with this kind of attack, has lost this ability because its very expensive to produce, this saccharide coat. so after many generations and natural mutations, a variety of e coli without a saccharide coating came to dominate in the laboratory, because it could grow faster and outcompete the wild kind with the expensive immune system fighting saccaride coat that also makes it grow slower
furthermore, bacteria have sex (no, really) and exchange genetic information with other bacteria (in fact, sometimes totally different species). such that anything introduced into e coli in the lab could wind up in wild e coli, and visa versa
antibiotic resistance is one such genetic trick that bacteria freely trade with each other in the wild and evolved in the wild. however, just like the saccharide coat, extra gene tricks incur a production cost that slows reproduction, such that e coli without extra genes always win out in the end (unless they are in hostile environments that require the expensive protective gene to survive)
therefore, even if e coli evolved complete resistance to all forms of antibiotic resistance, all you would have to do is wait a few generations, and the resistance would naturally fade in nature. because the resistance is expensive to produce, and mutants lacking the resistance would grow faster and outcompete, if there were no antibiotics around. the e coli would then be vulnerable to antibiotics again (but also would quickly re-evolve resitance upon exposure). only in an environment of constant antibiotic use does e coli have resistance to antibiotics ready and waiting close by. that's why its bad to take antibiotics for each and every little sniffle you get, and why its bad to constantly feed animals antibiotics to grow bigger
likewise, people who fear biotechnology, about a mutant gene escaping from the lab and taking over the world, are simply ignorant on the actual science. of course, if someone gave e coli or another organism a gene which increased survival abilities in new environments, or did not incur any biological production costs, then yes, that organism would take over the world or colonize new areas. but mother nature is already randomly handing bacteria these genes already in the form of mutations, and in the form of gene transfer with other creatures, so its unlikely humanity can think up and give e coli or another animal some gene that mother nature has not already thought of herself via random mutations, millions of years ago
everything biotechnologists do to e coli and other organisms today involve adding genes that require extra effort to produce. such that they give the organism with that gene an automatic survival disadvantage
Drug rotation to avoid resistant bacteria? (Score:2)
With a sufficient pool of antibiotics I wonder if a drug rotation could help avoid resistant bacteria? Only use certain drugs in certain years?
absolutely, good idea (Score:2)
of course, given the reemergence of drug resistant tuberculosis and staphylococcus on the world stage, then such centralized control becomes a lot easier to implement with military and legal enforcement: people begin to understand what is really at stake. unfortunately, shortsighted as people are, i don't see
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Part of why living organisms lose genes they don't need is because, as you've said, if you have two organisms and one is producing unneeded genes and the other isn't, the one who isn't has a very slight competitive advantage. But a larger factor is that mutations in unneeded genes will have no effect on the organism's survival, but will be likely to make the gene nonfunctional. There are mutations going on all the time, across the whole genome; the
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That's not the only cost, though that's the only one people see. This cycle might be carbon-neutral, for those with greenhouse considerations. Then there's the cost of going to war once a decade or so over energy, the cost in lives and money for such activities, and this also might mean less money to those that would use it to fund terrorist activities.
yes, but those aren't economic costs (Score:3, Insightful)
but they aren't economically quantifiable costs. or at least, they aren't economically quantifiable when i go to the gas station and fill up my car, or when exxon buys a tanker of crude from kuwait. the abstract costs from using gas dug up comes in the form of a suicide bomber or a stupid war or hurricane katrina... sometime later
in other words, your concerns are a lot harder to address than a concern
Re:like any gasoline replacement (Score:5, Funny)
Is that a comparison of the different intensities that your wife has to nag you to do something before you actually get up and do it?
mod parent up ;-) (Score:2)
uh (Score:2)
no, it's actually true (Score:3, Insightful)
the middle east is the meeting point, the center of eurasia and africa, the largest land mass in the world. such that the people living there, since ancient times, have been exposed to more violent inroads from surrounding cultures than any other place on the planet. this has led the evolution of the most violent cultures on the planet. simply out of survival necessity
the amish, for example, espouse a nonviolent and nonwarring livelihood. well, this has less to do with
Net energy return (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with many alternative hydrocarbon sources is that the amount of energy required as input is to get a gallon of gasoline is greater than the energy required to extract oil and refine it into gasoline today. We're going to be in a severe energy shortage when we run low on oil to extract - we're used to cheap, high density energy in the form of oil and gas. We won't have the excess energy to throw into making gasoline with bacteria unless it's a lesser or equivalent cost to what it is today (and can be scaled up without competing with food for arable land). The only way out of the mess of the pending energy crash is fusion or extreme conservation starting now. All of this talk of replacing gasoline or making it carbon neutral is really beside the point.
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All of this talk of replacing gasoline or making it carbon neutral is really beside the point.
Thats a pretty silly thing to say. How long do you think society could continue to function without energy for transportation? Our entire economic infrastructure relies heavily on fossil fuels. Transporting goods requires portable energy. Transporting people to and from their place of employment requires portable energy. Its very irresponsible to claim that one issue is greater than the other. They are basicall
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Oil (and its byproducts: kerosene, gasoline, diesel, etc) is one way of converting cheminal potential energy into energy that does actual work. The process of breaking down hydrocarbons creates heat, which through either the internal combusition engine, or turbines, gives us movemement or electrical energy.
Right now, and indeed for the past 30-odd years, oil has been far from the cheapest way of generating energy. There are next to no oil fired power plants in the world
(Somewhat) obscure Vonnegut reference (Score:3, Funny)
What about greenhouse gases? (Score:2)
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The other pollutants that result from gas-burning engines are manageable. Not ignorable, certainly, but there are known technologies to mitigate them to a great extent.
Carbon free gasoline? huh? (Score:3, Interesting)
Gasoline and liquid motor fuels are primarily alkanes. These have the chemical formula of CnH(2n+2). If n=8 you have octane and I assume you have heard of the octane rating of gasoline.
You _can't_ have gasoline without carbon unless you are god and can change the laws of chemistry.
Ethanol is C2H5OH. It is a partically oxidized alkane. n=2 in this case. the OH makes it an alcohol. The reason ethanol carries less energy than gasoline is simply because it is partially oxidized. Note it i
what is the feedstock (Score:5, Insightful)
One ton of dry organic matter is equivalent to 2 barrels of oil on an energy basis if one can convert it for free. This is the cellulose to fuel pathway.... cellulose and pentosans and liganans. T. verdii which is the fungus that brings us stone washed blue jeans is cited as a candidate for cellulostic ethanol but T. verdii is a cellulose digester. Other fungus digest the pentosans and lignans as well - fungus such as P. ostrates and it also will live in liquid culture.
Now the issue with the bacteria is the food supply. Are they to digest woody plant materials? Are they to digest a fungus which digests woody plant materials. Is there some other food source being proposed?
Another fact is that if 100% of the USA corn crop were to be converted to ethanol - then this would supply USA liquid fuel needs for about 2 weeks. Any bushel of corn converted to ethanol will come out of someone's mouth. It may be a pigs mouth or it may be a mouth in the 3rd world - but someone has to give up their food so that we can feed a car.
Personally I think bio-fuels have a bright future. However I'm not convinced these guys are on the right track. Alga can produce bio-diesel from sunlight. Here we know the energy source. In the case of e-coli and other bacteria the energy source is sugar which leaves us with exactly the same issues of ethanol... namely: there isn't enough corn and other grains around to make much of a difference even if we can perfect the technology to convert it into a fuel for almost free.
However if we can convert the cellulose, pentosans and lignans then maybe because there are a lot of herbacious plant wastes kicking around. If so - then one tonne of dry plant matter will convert to about 2 barrels of oil. If a barrel of oil is worth $75 bux then one has $150 bux per tonne in the budget to obtain and convert the plant matter.
Something to consider is that normally in the case of agriculture this material is returned to the soil where it contributes to the organic matter that creates a high quality soil. If this material is carted off to a fuel plant then what happens to the quality of the soil?
Great... (Score:3, Funny)
So soon I'll be able to contract a flesh-eating, anti-biotic resistant, EXPLOSIVE infection.
Just great. While you're at it how about a pill that turns body fat into C4?
--
I for one, welcome our explosive bacterial overlords.
Is there anything (Score:2, Insightful)
everyone can be youtube fart-fire guy (Score:2)
Whole Foods Market refuse to sell bio-petrol... ;) (Score:2)
How is this helpful? (Score:2)
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There's nothing inherently wrong with burning gasoline. The problems we face from it are:
a) introducing new carbon to the atmosphere
b) finite supply of petroleum
This development, if it turns into a full-scale production technology, solves both those problems.
Oh just great (Score:2)
Repent, the "gray-goo" scenario of nanotechnology is at hand.
Can they eat garbage? (Score:3, Interesting)
Okay, so they can eat corn. That's okay, because I'd expect that we COULD grow a hell of a lot of it were the market to make it worthwhile. But...
If they'd consume offal, landfill material, non-rec-plastic, nuclear waste, etc, that would be much better. That's essentially what the earth does to make conventional oil, isn't it? Dead plants, animals, etc compressed into peat, into crude? Lets find a useful product to make from all this trash we create!
Replicate that, and you'd have something interesting. Kinda like this: http://www.mindfully.org/Energy/2003/Anything-Int
Though, if I recall correctly, I heard that the plant was closed, due to the smell.
The numbers don't work too well (Score:3, Informative)
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At least if you're going to correct someone, correct them [b][i]correctly[/b][/i].
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Just to be pedantic - Escherichia coli (italicized; yes it matters!)
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benign, and makes up a lot of the volume of your gut.
Bacteria are always present in healthy adults, and the
common varieties protect you from more dangerous stuff.
USA fuel consumption: 20589 thousand BOPD (Score:3, Interesting)
One of the best sources for this information is the BP statistical review of world energy. You can find it on the BP website: http://www.bp.com/productlanding.do?categoryId=684 8&contentId=7033471 [bp.com]
It doesn't much matter what you start with: raw crude or refined fuel... what is at issue is the percentage. 30% of either is about 7 million barrels per day equivalent and lordy I have no idea where they plan to get it. Alberta for instance is running flat out trying to boost t
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