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Echeria Coli Co-Opted To Make Gasoline
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.
actually, every person on the planet has e coli in his or her gut, and in fact, the bacteria is symbiotic with us, not a parasite. that is, without it, we would have trouble digesting, absorbing food, and be vitamin K deficient
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
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
you have to talk about "is it cheaper than digging energy out of the ground"
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
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The real question is what is the net return on energy? Is it greater than gasoline in its current state?
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.
...and you've eaten your pen. simply stunning.
It accomplishes little to have the critter if we have little to feed it.
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?
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.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
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.
They're aware that this is less than ideal from the total volume and a competing-with-food standpoints.
;-). This all stems from the fallacy that there is a global food shortage--there is no shortage of or threat to capacity to feed the world's population. Sadly, famine today is almost 100 percent due to politics and logistics. Untold volumes of grain have been burned, buried or dumped in the ocean while children starve in Africa in the name of global trade agreements, market manipulation and so forth. It is tragic but agricultural commodity markets are are amongst the least-free, most-manipulated markets out there.
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.