Synthetic Biology For Natural Fuel

CoolBeans writes "Making ethanol is easy. Making enough ethanol to fill every gas tank in a developed country is tricky. The Department of Energy has promised $125 million to the Joint BioEnergy Institute, a team of six national labs and universities that will be run like a startup company. They intend to create new life forms that are optimized for alcohol production. The genes of crops that produce large amounts of cellulose will be tweaked to improve the yield per acre and to increase drought and pest resistance. Microbes that produce sugar from cellulose and ethanol from sugar will be built for speed and efficiency." The article mentions as an aside that earlier this year, "the energy giant BP gave $500 million to Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley lab, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for similar alternative energy research. That gift will fund the Energy Biosciences Institute, which will operate separately from the JBEI." So UC Berkeley and LBL are both participating in two separate energy-biotech research programs.

Comments

Why Ethanol?

[Azuma Hazuki]

Seriously, why? Why bother with all this expensive "synthetic biology" or (worse) growing and using perfectly good corn to make something that's less effective than gasoline when you can just grow an imperial fuckton of algae, render them down for biofuel, and use that? Carbon neutral, and you get something more akin to good ol' diesel fuel than ethanol.

Plus there's some incentive to clean up eutrophicated bodies of water this way because, hey, that's profit floating on the top!

Any money for biodiesel?

[Kadin2048]

As much as I'm supportive of any program that might, conceivably, provide a partial alternative to our petroleum addiction, I have seen several pieces lately about ethanol vs. biodiesel, which seem to indicate that biodiesel is a much more realistic alternative to gasoline than ethanol is, but that its major shortcoming is that it doesn't reward corn production.

While I don't have the background to really comment or hold an opinion one way or another, I just think it's a mistake to look too hard for "one solution" that we need to put all our money and hopes in. We need to be looking all over the place, and we need to realize that the final solution might not involve all the cars in the country running on the same fuel. There might be certain fuels that are preferable in certain regions or for certain types of vehicles, and although it might fundamentally alter the transportation network and your ability to drive one vehicle anywhere, that might not be a terrible outcome.

Re:Any money for biodiesel?

[MtViewGuy]

Actually, the biodiesel route is a far more practical one because most diesel engines only need minor modifications for run biodiesel fuel. With modern particulate traps, new exhaust catalyst designs to reduce NOx output, and urea gas injection to reduce NOx output even further, today's diesel engines with their common-rail pressurized direct fuel injection are quiet, powerful and don't generate the bad exhaust of older diesel engines. Also, diesel fuel is full compatible with the current fuel distribution network for gasoline/diesel fuel, which is not true for delivery of E85 fuel and hydrogen for fuel cells.

For example, the new BMW 123d hatchback/coupé just announced now offers a 200 ps (197 bhp) dual-turbo turbodiesel engine that gives the car true high performance, yet can get around 40 mpg in normal limited-access motorway driving in the 100-120 km/h (62-75 mph) range. With today's new emission controls, that same engine could probably meet even the stringent EPA Tier 2 Bin 5 emission standard for automobile engines; the new Euro 5 emission rules will be similar to this EPA standard.

Re:Answers

[e3kmouse]

Well the beauty of a plug-in hybrid is that you stay on "plugged-in" electricity for your every day commute.
Most of the Prius' that are being modified as plug-in hybrids will last for 50-60 miles on one charge and then switch over to hybrid "mode" after that. So you can stay off petrol for your everyday commute, and switch to a still fuel efficient "hybrid mode" when you want to go skiing or hiking for the weekend.

There was some stat listed on Google's site that said if every car in the world was switched to a plug-in hybrid, the current grid could power 82% of those cars. I'm not sure of the accuracy of that statement, but at the very least we know that the cars won't switch to plug-in hybrid over night. I think the infrastructure of the utility companies could grow to support that need over time. No matter what "solution" we choose it will take time to be adopted by the general public. If the utilities start ramping up now (being more efficient etc..), we might be able to support a world of plug-ins just fine.

Last point. I'm not sure about your "energy efficiency won't work in SUV's" statement. I actually just got done test driving a Ford Escape (SUV) Hybrid edition this weekend. I had no problems with it's power output at all. I even took it up a 4-5% grade and it handled the climb with ease. (Averaged 40MPG for the trip too... not shabby for an SUV)