Solar Powered Microbes Manufacture Biofuels

esocid alerts us to news that scientists from the University of Texas at Austin have created a microbe capable of making cellulose, which can then be turned into ethanol. The bacteria use sunlight as an energy source, and the cellulose can be harvested without destroying them. Quoting: "The new cyanobacteria produce a relatively pure, gel-like form of cellulose that can be broken down easily into glucose. 'The problem with cellulose harvested from plants is that it's difficult to break down because it's highly crystalline and mixed with lignins [for structure] and other compounds,' Nobles says. He was surprised to discover that the cyanobacteria also secrete large amounts of glucose or sucrose, sugars that can be directly harvested from the organisms."

Comments

Sweet!

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Any other "useful" *wink wink* chemicals produced in that gel?

Re:Sweet!

[Missing_dc]

Well, from a layman's perspective, it sounds like a replacement for Metamucil.

Re:Sweet!

[somersault]

Are you perchance needing a convenient replacement for your eyedrops?

Very large surface area needed

[SlashDev]

According to the article, the approximate area needed to produce ethanol with corn to fuel all U.S. transportation needs is around 820,000 square miles, an area almost the size of the entire Midwest.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[sakdoctor]

I don't think that was his intention. The area required to farm any useful amount of karma would be around 820,000 square miles.
That's an area almost the size of the entire Midwest.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[Anonymous Coward]

Err neither of you appear to have read the article.

The figure quoted in the gp is for traditional 'corn' based biofuels. There's a prediction that this process could reduce it to 3.5% of this area that's 28700 Square miles (about the size of South Carolina).

The other fact that's quite interesting in the article is that these bacteria are happy in salt water conditions.... Can you think of any large expanses of salt water around the place?

Re:Very large surface area needed

[bhima]

From the Article:

"Brown and Nobles calculate that the approximate area needed to produce ethanol with corn to fuel all U.S. transportation needs is around 820,000 square miles, an area almost the size of the entire Midwest.
They hypothesize they could produce an equal amount of ethanol using an area half that size with the cyanobacteria based on current levels of productivity in the lab, but they caution that there is a lot of work ahead before cyanobacteria can provide such fuel in the field. Work with laboratory scale photobioreactors has shown the potential for a 17-fold increase in productivity. If this can be achieved in the field and on a large scale, only 3.5 percent of the area growing corn could be used for cyanobacterial biofuels."

By my math 3.5% of 820,000 is 28,700 sqaure miles. Which by most metrics is a lot of land, but not nearly what the karma whore was suggesting.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[sumdumass]

It's a good thing that we can't use corn for all our transportation needs then.

But it would seem that with this bacteria, we wouldn't need the area the size of the entire Midwest to produce fuels. Even if we stayed with using corn, we can now use parts of the plants that weren't possible/practical before. Parts like the stalk and leaves that typically got shredded up and left on the ground. We could use the grass clipping from your front or back yard, the grass clipping from public offices, we could grow commercial forests of trees to extend the hight of the plants and maximize the area being used. (think taller = more usable product instead of an earn of corn per plant.)

Re:Very large surface area needed

[Anonymous Coward]

[everything you wrote]

I think you got lapped, dude. You were so insightful, moderation overflowed longint and wrapped back around to -1 troll. One more mod point and you'll unset all the bits and be back at 0.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[Raptoer]

Good thing that this idea doesn't use corn then.
This is really amazing, since corn ethanol is a terrible idea, switchgrass isn't much better, and we can't grow sugarcane in large quantities in the US (although you can use sugar beets).
Even better is that it is not a seasonal crop. With corn ethanol I can see one year we just run out of ethanol and well... have to wait for the next crop!


I just hope that it isn't going to be forgotten or swept under the rug.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[Anonymous Coward]

The best idea is probably to diversify our energy sources instead of relying on just one or the other.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[tolgyesi]

How much energy can be produced from the same sunlight or area with solar panels? Well, instead of 17% with an expensive equipment, we get 0.017% but maybe cheaper.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[budgenator]

Corn for just ethanol is a bad idea, but corn pressed to remove the oil for biodiesel,
sugar removed for fermentation to ethanol
the stover used for cellulose conversion,
and the high protein distiller's dried grain fed back to cattle for food production, not so bad.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[abarrow]

OMG! That's 18.576051779935275080906148867314 times the size of Rhode Island!

Re:Very large surface area needed

[fastest fascist]

But how is anyone supposed to set up a lucrative, patent-protected energy monopoly/cartel with all that diversity?

Re:Very large surface area needed

[Gordonjcp]

Ethanol is only really useful for powering petrol engines. Far better to use grain to produce oil and run diesel engines.

I know the American automotive industry is a bit behind the curve with technology, but most manufacturers are getting rid of their wheezy underpowered petrols. In a few years you won't see new petrol cars at all.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[djones101]

But how is anyone supposed to set up a lucrative, patent-protected energy monopoly/cartel with all that diversity? Do what others have done, become President!

Re:Very large surface area needed

[camperdave]

The "parts like the stalk and leaves that typically got shredded up and left on the ground" get broken down by microbes thus returning nutrients to the soil. It's the decaying plant matter that makes soil soil instead of a bunch of microscopic rocks. If we start using the whole plant instead of just the ear, we're going to wind up turning the midwest into a giant dust bowl.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[Archades54]

Gatorade factory?

Re:Very large surface area needed

[cbart387]

Ethanol is only really useful for powering petrol engines. Far better to use grain to produce oil and run diesel engines. Really? I'm not sure that would be the best approach. We need to either

• a) do a better job producing
  b) do a better job distributing

before using that as a fuel source (outside of us eating). There's currently an issue with food prices and using them as a way to power our transportation is just going to make it worse.

http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2008/news/food.crisis/index.html

Re:Very large surface area needed

[Anonymous Coward]

28,700 square miles is a little less than 20 million acres. That is a lot of land, but it is not a ginormous amount of land. Other U.S. land use figures for comparison (2002 USDA figures, in millions of acres):

Forest-use: 651
Grassland, pasture, and range: 587
Cropland: 442
Special uses: 297
Miscellaneous land: 228
Urban: 60

In other words, we are talking about the equivalent of 1/3 the total urban area in the U.S. or 4.5% of the total cropland in the U.S. or less than 1% of the total land area of the U.S.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[cayenne8]

"But it would seem that with this bacteria, we wouldn't need the area the size of the entire Midwest to produce fuels. Even if we stayed with using corn, we can now use parts of the plants that weren't possible/practical before. Parts like the stalk and leaves that typically got shredded up and left on the ground. We could use the grass clipping from your front or back yard, the grass clipping from public offices, we could grow commercial forests of trees to extend the hight of the plants and maximize the area being used. (think taller = more usable product instead of an earn of corn per plant.)"

Fantastic!! It would be great to get off the fossil fuel, and dependency on foreign countries for our energy needs. No more having to pay high fuel costs...and as a by product, maybe we see the return of fun cars like in the muscle car era!! I'd love to get behind the wheel of a 455 engine, accompanied by modern fuel management and the like. No more fugly Priuses.

On a side note...I wish we could drop the subsidies for corn and drop the tariffs on sugar...it would help keep costs for animal feed down, and maybe we could get a proper Coca Cola with cane sugar in it again. And get the damned HFCS out our our diets. I've started looking for that on food lables, and I am shocked that it is in damned near everything you buy at the store. It is hard to find a loaf of bread without the high fructose corn syrup in it....???

Hmm...rambling....time for morning coffee....

Re:Very large surface area needed

[SQLGuru]

I'm sure there's enough roof surface area that can be reused for this purpose that we can get to 1/3 to 1/2 of that figure fairly easily.....and I'd gladly put something on my roof if it would offset my fuel costs. (And yes, I've strongly considered going solar for a while now).

Layne

Re:Very large surface area needed

[aurispector]

Heh. Waste cellulosic material isn't always waste. The cyanobacteria idea is the first I've heard that starts to make sense. As I understand it, all you basically have to do is put some of the soup out in the sun and it produces cellulose gel. Cellulose is a carbohydrate chain; does this mean that it sucks CO2 out of the air in the process? Although this would be a net zero gain/loss on CO2, at least it could reduce the whole sucking carbon out of the ground and spewing it into the air problem we have now.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not like the midwest is good for anything else.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[s_p_oneil]

As with other solar collectors, they may also be able to go vertical like this:
http://www.verticalfarm.com/

Re:Very large surface area needed

[drrck]

Most likely they would advocate planing an alternative crop like switchgrass on otherwise unproductive ground.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[CrimsonAvenger]

The other fact that's quite interesting in the article is that these bacteria are happy in salt water conditions.... Can you think of any large expanses of salt water around the place?

Not to be a doomsayer, but isn't talking about putting this stuff in an ocean (or anything much connected to an ocean) a bit premature? Sort of like bringing rabbits to Australia?

Re:Very large surface area needed

[theophilosophilus]

The "parts like the stalk and leaves that typically got shredded up and left on the ground" get broken down by microbes thus returning nutrients to the soil. It's the decaying plant matter that makes soil soil instead of a bunch of microscopic rocks. If we start using the whole plant instead of just the ear, we're going to wind up turning the midwest into a giant dust bowl.

Not really. If we start planting corn on corn to cash in on high prices we will. Crop rotation accomplishes the replenishment of the soil you are referring to. Corn is followed by soybeans, a legume. Legumes are responsible for the phenomenon you are referring to. Crop rotation was started in response to the problems of the dirty thirties.

The biomass technologies currently being pioneered by companies such as Poet simply use the chaff, leaving the corn's root system to provide cover over the winter.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[Tenebrousedge]

Fantastic!! It would be great to get off the fossil fuel, and dependency on foreign countries for our energy needs

Actually, you're only one for two there. Ethanol isn't a fossil fuel, but it may as well be one, since burning it releases carbon into the atmosphere. Also, ethanol has a lower energy density than fossil fuels, so you could probably look forward to that 455, but it probably wouldn't be the car that you were hoping for.

Ethanol has always been a solution looking for a problem. Right now it may be a convenience, but the actual goal is to find a nonpolluting way to move ourselves around. Electric cars, therefore, should be what we focus our efforts towards.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[Anonymous Coward]

More like Slurm ...

Re:Very large surface area needed

[Dare nMc]

the article did say their is a possibility of a 17 fold increase, reducing the size to 3.5% of the projected area for corn.
So a good crop rotation of all corn land, only taking every 4th years production dedicated to petrol, other years rotate in beans (builds up the soil for grass/corn crops nicely.) Sounds like in theory this could become workable. (of course what I mean is 1/4 of the land every year goes to producing the cellulose plant, and you rotate that to different lands every year maintaining 1/4 of land out of food crop production.)

Re:Very large surface area needed

[torkus]

While the doomsayers go on and on, keep in mind a few things:

Corn-based ethanol is horribly inefficient. Of course it's going to be a huge area.

Their improved process, while requiring a large amount of land, is to provide ALL THE FUEL for transportation needs in the USA.

Anyone want to do the math on how much power solar would generate with 20 million acres?

Re:Very large surface area needed

[Dare nMc]

the article is that these bacteria are happy in salt water conditions

my understanding of the article, is that we will have to have 28,000 square miles of crop land producing the sugar/cellulose source for the bacteria. Then you would be able to dump that in the (salty as a option) bacteria home (ie Great Salt Lake in Utah) where the bacteria process it into a more use-able product.
So you need the crop land and the bacteria land. They did mention algae as a possible cellulose source also, doubtful that will be as acceptable (politically) on a mass production basis as sharing crop land though.
though that wasn't perfectly clear (to me) in the article.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[MightyYar]

And we can go further, because simply growing gasoline does not have to be our only solution.

Double fuel mileage and you only need 14350 square miles. Get commuters on more public transit: 12000 square miles. Get 25% of the cars on the road to go electric, 9000 square miles.

Now we're in New Hampshire territory, and that's without doing anything really drastic.

Unfortunately, gasoline isn't going anywhere... even increasing the mileage of our cars would reduce the cost of gas to the point that no one would be developing these alternatives.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[theophilosophilus]

According to the article, the approximate area needed to produce ethanol with corn to fuel all U.S. transportation needs is around 820,000 square miles, an area almost the size of the entire Midwest. This is why the debate over energy alternatives is so skewed. I don't think any proponent of ethanol claims its the magic solution to all energy needs. The debate is about how we can use our surplus corn to reduce dependence on foreign fossil fuels.

If there is a better source of ethanol that comes around, then so be it. Corn ethanol has stimulated development of the next generation of technology.

Implicit in the parent's argument is the idea that ethanol competes for food crop acres and thus raises prices. That is correct. However, the sensationalist media and proponents of other energy alternatives neglect several components of the equation. One component is the argument that high food prices is bad for the third world. The argument seems confusing when you discover that these are usually the same people that argue farm subsidies are causing food prices to be too low . Recent Wall Street Journal articles indicate that high crop prices are finally stimulating investment in third world agriculture. Another component is the argument that today's high food prices are because of ethanol. This is also confusing because similar price increases have been witnessed in products that have nothing to do with corn production. Rice for example, has shown the same percentage jump and yet does not compete with corn acres. My last point is that fuel prices are a major cost of corn production. If we eliminated ethanol production today, the increase in fuel prices due to reduced dilution from ethanol would mean that food prices would hardly change (if at all). [Note this is a little too simplistic because eliminating ethanol would distribute increased fuel costs over a market broader than agriculture - the net effect is the same].

I am not arguing that tying energy and food production together can't be dangerous. I am arguing that we haven't reached that point. Further, in a sense, energy and food production have always been tied together.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[AdamThor]

Indeed, cyanobacteria are quite a nuisance in aquarium maintenance. They are difficult to get rid of b/c not so many things like to eat stuff with cyanide in it.

Releasing it into the wild sounds like a terrible idea.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[Anonymous Coward]

It's got what cyanobacteria crave!

Re:Very large surface area needed

[hesiod]

Biofuels != Ethanol

Re:Very large surface area needed

[sumdumass]

No, it all depends on the cost of replacing it by other means. If it costs $1 per acre to to apply these same nutrients artificially where $3-$5 and acre could be made from selling the stocks too, then the choice if to add it back later.

But this chopping and disposing of the plant stocks is really a new trait to farming. we used to collect the stocks when harvesting and either burn them, or compost them in a separate type of a process. The most common is to bundle them together and place them in a field over top of lat vegetables like pumpkins to help protect again frost late in the year.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[Firethorn]

But it's carbon that came out of the atmosphere in the growing of the corn(or other biomass), so it's carbon neutral.

No 'might as well be one'.

The lower energy density can be fixed a couple ways. One simple method would be to simply increase the size of the gas tank. The other, smarter way if E85 or even E100 becomes common would be to cut the tie to gasoline. Specifically 'Regular'. Ethanol has an extremely high octane rating, you can build a very high compression engine for it and gain back enough efficiency to make up the gas mileage. Only problem is that you wouldn't be able to fill the tank with gasoline. Well, you could go halfway and just have to fill up on premium if you can't get ethanol. It'd work as long as you can normally get ethanol, but as I can't, I wouldn't get such a vehicle.

I read that one car has a computer controlled turbo that would ramp up the effective compression when running on ethanol to get extra power and even efficiency.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[sumdumass]

I agree with about everything but the farm subsidies. I think they need to be adjusted, of course higher prices is supposed to create the incentive to plant instead of not planting which the mechanisms appear to be broken by the current ethanol craze.

But I look at the far subsidies as a strategic reserve. as long as we have farm land in reserve creating the ability to have a stable and profitable market for the lands cultivates, we won't see a sell off of lands which means a drought in one area can be compensated in another. We need the subsidy for these reasons. Sure it is complicated, And sure it seems to get out of whack every so often. But it protects us as a county in more ways then it hurts us. We just need to manage it better.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[hesiod]

20 million acres = 871,200 million square feet
This page claims "under excellent conditions we can get 62.5 watt-hours per square foot." That would be 54,450 billion* watt-hours. Assuming non-excellent conditions (75% of "excellent"?), that's 40,837.5 billion. These numbers don't mean much to me, but you asked for them. Feel free to correct my math, I was never that great.

* that's "American billion"

Re:Very large surface area needed

[Firethorn]

I was figuring a desert type environment, with salt water pumped in more or less straight to provide the water would be a lot cheaper than many other environments. Fresh water is getting expensive.

As for release into the wild, most likely not a big deal - conditions conductive to their growth isn't universal, areas conductive probably have non-altered species of cyanobacteria already that are more competitive.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to be a doomsayer, but isn't talking about putting this stuff in an ocean (or anything much connected to an ocean) a bit premature? Sort of like bringing rabbits to Australia?


No problem. Start it off in the Great Salt Lake. That way, if something goes wrong, all we have screwed up is Utah.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[pintpusher]

And where does the carbon in ethanol come from? If it's ethanol made from corn or other plants, then it comes from... the atmosphere... carbon-neutral.

This cyano-bacteria... I don't know, but probably from the atmosphere as well.

So yes, he'd likely get his 455. Though I prefer this.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[moderatorrater]

we're going to wind up turning the midwest into a giant dust bowl. Yeah, like that could ever happen.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[hey!]

By way of comparison, according to the USDA projects that ethanol production will cause the total US corn acreage to reach 90.5 million acres, or over 140 thousand square miles.

We grow a lot of corn.

If you fly over the US, you'll see there is a great deal of area that is arid. Assuming that you can recycle the water used, it would make more sense to locate production there. Saudi Arabia might well be interested in this. They're already in the energy business, they have plenty of sunshine, and they have plenty of water -- it's just salty. And, by a stroke of irony, the land area of Saudi Arabia happens to be just about 829 thousand square miles, so if the process was no more efficient than corn, they could still supply the US transportation sector with nine thousand square miles left to accomodate residents and religious pilgrims.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[Firethorn]

You'd probably see more profit* going solar than trying for this. Biological processes can be tricky, and you'd still need the equipment to convert the cellulose to ethanol. Filters and storage tanks. Etc...

Personally, I'd vote for more or less empty desert areas in Texas and Nevada and such, using pumped in sea water.

*IE your balance sheet would be less red at the end of the day, at least for now.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[dedalus2000]

I think part of the point of this research is also that land that was unsuitable for farming could be used. for example this could be grown in sea water in tanks in the Desert. so it's not only not competing for cropland but it's not competing for water resources nor fertilizer nor any other agricultural necessity. though i don't know what the backlash would be politically or environmentally to large pools of bacteria and brackish water covering much of the desert region of the US. I also don't know that it would be a good idea to flush any of these bacteria into the ocean so assuming that evaporation is an issue renewing the water would lead to gradually more saline conditions in the tanks.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[Tenebrousedge]

So what? TFA is about algal ethanol.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[redxxx]

well, because this isn't the final step in the process, there is no real advantage to roof top, as it all has to get shipped out to a refinery and back (rather than photovoltic cells delivering power where it is needed.) Water is pretty heavy stuff anyway, and my POS roof need a fair bit of work before it would support an extra few tonnes(cubic meters) of water.

Don't know, but this doesn't seem like it would all that great a use of roof tops.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[PitaBred]

If you don't know why you should mod the parent up, do yourself a favor and go watch Idiocracy

Re:Very large surface area needed

[SatanicPuppy]

It'd be more efficient to use land closer to where the stuff will be needed. The problem with the midwest is that you'd have to transport the stuff from there to be processed, and that would incur a lot of overhead.

With this sort of production, it makes more sense to set up centers based on usage. Remember, the great thing about bacteria is that they can be easily farmed vertically so we could get the same area without having to have to use purely horizontal cultivation.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[Hojima]

actually, there is no prior foreign species invasion that you could compare that to. Imagine a bacteria that can reproduce as fast as plankton, but makes a shell of cellulose for protection. It might utterly supplant the ocean biosphere. Though I don't have enough knowledge about the ocean biosphere nor these bacteria to say that the scenario will get this bad, but there will definitely be some disaster than comes of it.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[Hatta]

Double fuel mileage and you only need 14350 square miles. Get commuters on more public transit: 12000 square miles. Get 25% of the cars on the road to go electric, 9000 square miles.

That might be harder than you think. We're already making cars that go 30mpg. Maximum theoretical milage is around 120mpg. Doubling milage would put us at 50% of the theoretical maximum, which would be a very impressive technical feat. Getting more cars off the road would help, but switching to electric just means you're getting your power somewhere else.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[aurispector]

Um, no...Cyan is a COLOR, the color your face will turn if you ingest *cyanide*.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[somersault]

Can you think of any large expanses of salt water around the place? Not unless we grow another island in the middle of the oceans, like on Superman, and then make a realllly big bowl, and put some saltwater in it..

Re:Very large surface area needed

[somersault]

That or the Dead Sea. That thing is DEAD!

Re:Very large surface area needed

[LunaticTippy]

The bacteria produce cellulose and sugars from sunlight and the atmosphere. There is no input of cellulose or sugars from cropland or algae. Crops and algae are other ways to produce cellulose and sugars.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[somersault]

They did mention algae as a possible cellulose source also, doubtful that will be as acceptable (politically) Is Al Gore insecure in his sexuality or something?

Re:Very large surface area needed

[somersault]

Double fuel mileage and you only need 14350 square miles. Get commuters on more public transit: 12000 square miles. Get 25% of the cars on the road to go electric, 9000 square miles. And with all the suicidal bored people you've now created, you'll indirectly reduce the population even further, resulting in even less of a need for biofuel! Yay

Re:Very large surface area needed

[corbettw]

Double fuel mileage....

Now we're in New Hampshire territory, and that's without doing anything really drastic. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

Is interesting the new mod for factually incorrect? I know the American automotive industry is a bit behind the curve with technology, but most manufacturers are getting rid of their wheezy underpowered petrols. In a few years you won't see new petrol cars at all.
Fact, per liter of displacement petrol engines produce more hp. Second fact diesel fuel prices are highly variable due to the seasonal demand for home heating oil. So I don't think the US car shopper is going to switch to diesel in a few years, unless CA gets their way.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[fritsd]

Don't worry, if we accidentally "reboot" the planet to "primordial soup" level, we'll just start over from there (see: Oxygen Catastrophe)..

At least these cyanobacteria seem to be doing photosynthesis which is a Good Thing for us :-).

Re:Very large surface area needed

[raddan]

But this is a good use for yard waste in sub/urban areas. Boston is now switching to actually doing something with yard waste (capturing methane from a compost pile), but in a lot of places, this just gets dumped somewhere and ignored. I would prefer that people use yard waste to, you know, fertilize their lawns (instead of doing the chemlawn thing), but it's pretty clear that the reason they don't is because they want a beautiful, leaf-free lawn. I personally just want to see lawns go away in general.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[darthflo]

Without knowing too much about the bacteria at hand: TFS says they rely on sunlight. Stacking water vertically decreases the amount of sunlight almost exponentially with height, so in this case vertical cultivation may be tricky to impossible.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[Tenebrousedge]

But it's carbon that came out of the atmosphere in the growing of the corn(or other biomass), so it's carbon neutral.

Hmm. I'd admit I was wrong, but I hear that when that happens here on /. it opens up a spacetime rift and ends the universe :)

But srsly, the more I think about it, it would probably be carbon negative. It's totally impractical, and there are other issues with lots of algae. As far as solar-powered energy sources, it seems like it's a bad tradeoff between efficiency and ease of storage.

As for the car, are you thinking perhaps about one with a variable compression ratio?

Re:Very large surface area needed

[MightyYar]

We're already making cars that go 30mpg. That's true, but the CAFE number today is less than that at 27.5. We could double it to 55 without too much heartache by 2020 I would think. Cars would have to get lighter and so safety would be compromised - but if done slowly enough the entire fleet of cars on the road would get lighter together and safety would not be an issue. People would have to accept cars that aren't quite as fast, too. A lot of engine efficiency improvement has gone towards performance instead of efficiency.

switching to electric just means you're getting your power somewhere else. That is true, but you still wouldn't need as much land to grow a gasoline alternative. You could do whatever was most efficient - maybe even solar cells on the same land area. In short, electric cars give you more options when it comes to where you get your energy from since delivery to the car is not going to have to change.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[MightyYar]

And with all the suicidal bored people you've now created, you'll indirectly reduce the population even further They aren't bored sitting in traffic? The train sucks, but sitting in a traffic jam is even worse, IMHO. You can't read the newspaper.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[MightyYar]

I know it's a subjective word, but I don't think "drastic" applies to doubling fuel mileage over 15 or 20 years. I don't think it applies to getting 10-20% more people into public transit. I don't think it applies to convincing people to try some of the new electric cars that seem to be coming out.

Drastic is more like forbidding people to own more than one car, or reducing speed limits to 40MPH. Rationing fuel... that's my definition of drastic.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[Anonymous Coward]

Arguably, one could say that the only way Utah can go is up...

Re:Very large surface area needed

[somersault]

This is true, though I tend to just avoid the rush hour traffic by going to work at 10 and leaving at 6:30 :P I've always chosen walking over bussing it as well, for cases where it takes 45 minutes or less at least..

Re:Very large surface area needed

[Anonymous Coward]

Stalk, not stock.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[QMO]

They aren't bored sitting in traffic? The train sucks, but sitting in a traffic jam is even worse, IMHO. You can't read the newspaper. Myth BUSTED!
I've seen people drive on the Garden State Parkway, and I can tell you that it's possible to read the newspaper, talk on the phone, eat breakfast and check email, all while driving 75 in a 55 zone.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[MightyYar]

Buses really suck, because they are just as susceptible to traffic as cars, but make extra stops.

Part of getting people out of cars would, obviously, involve improving the state of mass transit. Flexible hours, like you have, also saves gas since you are not idling in traffic.

In my last job, I rented an apartment 10 minutes away, so I was able to walk. If it was really nasty out, I could drive in about 1 minute, depending on the state of the single traffic light. Because of a situation with my wife's job, I had to move about 35 minutes away by car for a year - and that really sucked. I lost a whole hour of my day... and it all came out of my free time!

Re:Very large surface area needed

[rujholla]

Ethanol isn't a fossil fuel, but it may as well be one, since burning it releases carbon into the atmosphere.

Ethanol only releases as much carbon into the atmosphere as it removed from the atmosphere during its growth phase making it a net zero carbon emitter.

Electric cars, therefore, should be what we focus our efforts towards.

Electric cars are only as nonpoluting as the source of the electricity. If you are charging your car from electricity generated by burning coal you aren't saving much. But if you are running your car on pure ethanol or other biofuel, which mostly even the alternative fuel cars aren't doing now, you are just as carbon non poluting as an electric car.

I guess to decide between electric cars and alternative fuel vehicles, we really need to start by comparing the efficiency of these processes. Solar to electricity (photovoltaics I'd imagine) to mechanical (electric motors). Comapre that to solar to ethanol (using these bacteria etc) to mechanical (buring the ethanol) Or compare that to a hybrid biofuel / electric vehicle. Then factor in the requirements needed to manufacture and dispose of each type of vehicle. And, don't forget to factor in any non carbon pollution generated in the whole process. and dont forget ...

Re:Very large surface area needed

[toddhisattva]

One component is the argument that high food prices is bad for the third world. The argument seems confusing when you discover that these are usually the same people that argue farm subsidies are causing food prices to be too low . The price is too low here, while it is too high there.

Even the same price can be both too high and too low if you take geography, culture, topography, and so forth into account.

Some farm subsidies keep prices artificially high. All farm subsidies create opportunity for the Invisible Foot.

Rice for example, has shown the same percentage jump and yet does not compete with corn acres. They do not compete in acres, but they do compete in markets. If corn prices go up, rice prices go up as people switch to rice.

Behold the Socialist version of the Trickle-Down Theory in Practice! With Reagan's T-D, the downside was whining leftists. With Socialist Trickle-Down, the downside is food riots in Egypt of all places!!

Re:Very large surface area needed

[tmosley]

IT'S WHAT PLANTS CRAVE.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[MightyYar]

LOL... I've seen this, too. Another reason to hate driving. At least you can't claim to be bored!

This, by the way, just feeds my friends theory that cars are too safe. He claims that putting a giant metal spike in the middle of the steering wheel will make everyone safer (and presumably dissuade horn usage).

Re:Very large surface area needed

[gstoddart]

On a side note...I wish we could drop the subsidies for corn and drop the tariffs on sugar...it would help keep costs for animal feed down, and maybe we could get a proper Coca Cola with cane sugar in it again.

Bah!!! If you want proper Coca Cola, put the cocaine back into it. :-P

Cheers

Re:Very large surface area needed

[theophilosophilus]

Even the same price can be both too high and too low if you take geography, culture, topography, and so forth into account. I agree that it is an issue with frame of reference but disagree with what those reference points are. Low food prices are good for the world's consumers but bad for the world's producers. The third world is in a catch 22. If you dump cheap grain on the market, it destroys third world ag. If you raise the price it devastates third world consumers.

They do not compete in acres, but they do compete in markets. If corn prices go up, rice prices go up as people switch to rice. I'll concede this to a point. Fuel prices and increased demand from the developing world are a much bigger component.

What is really going on is that the world's largest countries (by population) suddenly have some extra cash and all resources are being burdened.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[Anonymous Coward]

switching to electric just means you're getting your power somewhere else. No, it's also a big win for efficiency because big power plants are much more efficient than car engines.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[Firethorn]

It'd be more efficient to use land closer to where the stuff will be needed. The problem with the midwest is that you'd have to transport the stuff from there to be processed, and that would incur a lot of overhead.

Why not process it right there? Then you're just shipping the fuel. Heck, put a pipe in next to the seawater draw in area and pump the fuel down it for loading into barges. It's not like we don't already ship fuel accross the world by barge.

With this sort of production, it makes more sense to set up centers based on usage. Remember, the great thing about bacteria is that they can be easily farmed vertically so we could get the same area without having to have to use purely horizontal cultivation.

There's economy of scale benefits as well; which is why I think that a consumer level rooftop installation is unlikely. I suggested the southwest deserts because land is cheap there, sun is plentiful, and ultimately speaking, rail or barge transportation isn't that expensive(yet, and could be fueled bye the centers). As for vertical farming, depends on how much sun the bacteria need/can use. Though it would be neat to have the south faces of skyscrapers be giant bacteria stacks for fuel.

Depending on a number of variables; vertical construction is likely to be more expensive than horizontal construction. Especially if land is cheap. As it would be in Texas/Nevada/Arizona

Re:Very large surface area needed

[d34thm0nk3y]

Gatorade factory?

That's not salt, its electrolytes!

Re:Very large surface area needed

[hesiod]

Yeah I had a brain fart and tried to stop the comment from posting, but didn't do it fast enough.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[entropys_cbn_dbt]

The reason that prices for grains other than corn are also going up is twofold: firstly because of rising demand (from China and India mostly as their economies take off) and a little thing called 'cross price elasticity of supply' which means that if the price of a product goes up, the price of substitutes and near substitutes also rise. At this point it is mostly reason two, but reason one will become more important in the future and it is realised that ethanol sourced corn isn't actually greenhouse friendly in any case, and because of the impact on food prices. And eventually 2nd gen ethanol production will take off, although I notice that the article just talked about area, not economic feasibility. Algae and bacterial sources of ethanol have been looked at for nearly thirty years, but nobody has found a way to do it profitably. The corn used for ethanol is subsidised too. its just that the subsidy is higher than for food grain. Thus the farmers raise the GM corn that is not as good for food as the ordinary corn (but ends up in corn syrup anyway).

Re:Very large surface area needed

[Anonymous Coward]

ya dude... thank you for that...

Re:Very large surface area needed

[Captain Splendid]

Best comment I've read in a long time. Thanks for the laugh.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[cayenne8]

I think we can see...with all the market for corn opening up, ethanol, feed for animals, food for humans...well, the demand is driving up prices. The subsidies are no longer needed due to the increased demand.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[Anonymous Coward]

Then burn anything that's left to replace or supplement the natural gas used to warm the corn mix beofe making ethanol and its even nicer

Re:Very large surface area needed

[Agent__Smith]

It's got what cyanobacteria crave! Why do they crave it?

Because it's got electrolytes.

Why does it have electrolytes?

Because thats what plants crave.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[Agent__Smith]

They aren't bored sitting in traffic? The train sucks, but sitting in a traffic jam is even worse, IMHO. You can't read the newspaper. I have seen people reading and worse while driving... SHOULDN'T is different than can't

Re:Very large surface area needed

[Gordonjcp]

Fact, per liter of displacement petrol engines produce more hp.

But they produce pathetic amounts of torque, unless you make them extremely slow-revving with big long cylinders. And then, they don't produce much power, because petrol engines don't really produce much power until they're spinning incredibly fast - with all the attendant noise and wear problems that brings.

So I don't think the US car shopper is going to switch to diesel in a few years, unless CA gets their way.

Their loss. Feel free to catch up with the rest of the world any time you like. Meanwhile I'll leave you to your slow, gutless petrols.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[ThatsNotPudding]

Can you think of any large expanses of salt water around the place? Most of the subsurface water in Kansas (Thanks, Colorado!*)

* - Now providing us with Uranium, too!

Re:Very large surface area needed

[sumdumass]

No, the subsidies are needed, they just need to react faster to how and when they are used. Currently, if a farmer plants a non subsidized crop in a subsidized field, they lose the ability to go back into the program with that acreage. Also some of the fields are committed to 5 years "restoration" and so on. But if we took all the corn that is being subsidized and planted all the fields to max capacity, we would have a situation where farmers wouldn't be able to pay for their seed, fertilizer, or fuel to work the land again. Then you would have no mechanism for control over the food supply or feed prices and if you think things are bad now, wait until then.

Don't think that Feed and food prices are all because of failing corn subsidies though. I just fertilized my hay fields and pasture lands and it costs me about 40% more over 3 years ago in lime alone (about 2 tons per acre @ 90 acres). That didn't count the fuel to spread it and this year I needed to harrow 40 acres and over seed it (about every 5-8 years or so for my land and two passes with the harrow). Fuel is about 25-30% higher then 2 years ago and I will average 4 cuttings of hay without good rain with 5 cuttings with good rain. If I get 5, I can sell some hay, If I get 4, I will probably have to keep it all throughout the winter. I don't feed the cattle with Corn unless I run out of hay and have no choice but as you can see, costs are up without subsidies anyways.

I will also put out about 200 acres of corn this year It was beans last year. Subsidies don't specifically take land out of production. Sometimes they just limit the production on the lands. For instance, I have the capacity to run 3200 acre corn population. I will only plant about 20,000/acre to save on the costs of equipment and restoring land nutrients. I don't take the subsidies for other reasons, but without them stabilizing the corn prices and keeping them up, I couldn't pay for my fuel or seed to plant, fertilizer or operate for harvest and so on. I remember years when we could barely break even in the past because of the government was too slow to react with subsidies. Why do you think almost every farmer has a full time job off the farm for operations under 1000 acres. And believe me, there is no fun and games to put 30-40 hours a week in somewhere, time your vacations for planting and the harvest just so you can put in an average of 12-15 hour days in for 3 weeks straight and then do about 2-3 hours of work after your regular job almost every night if you got animals.

Farms and farming operations simply don't make that much money. The government regulates the industry and markets by the use of subsidies. They make sure that if something happens in one region, it can be dealt with in another by reserve lands and capacities. Now a problem is that Corn is planted once or twice a year. After planting seasons (early and late depending on your geographic location), you can make no changes as far as increasing production until the year after the harvest. And then it will take roughly 70 days before the increase will be seen. That means over a year of you waiting and suffering the higher prices (cause costs typically go up if something happened to damage the expected crops like a drought). Ending subsidies will have absolutely no effect on that whatsoever at all.

I appreciate your concern over the situation but you simply don't have an understanding of the current problem. It isn't as if the hikes in prices are related to the subsidies as much as they are related to the timing of the hikes. First, you have a lot of fields going organic which reduces over all production by about 65%. Granted, these organic fields are only for human consumption (sweet corn) and organic animals meant for human consumption(dent corn) but it mean that more then 2 times as much land is required to the same production values. But this is a relatively small niche of the problem.

The next problem is all these politicians who don't have the foresight to plan for increased demand on material

Re:Very large surface area needed

[somersault]

Over here (presuming you're not in the UK) we have bus lanes which become active during rush hour - although they are not consistently applied on all roads so it still can be a problem.. the best commuting device is obviously a motorbike, I used to scoot through lanes of traffic all the time! I did knock someone's mirror once though.. oops :p

Re:Very large surface area needed

[MightyYar]

I'm in New York City, and we have a limited version of the same thing. The tunnels/bridges leading into the city have separate lanes. Unfortunately, on surface streets the buses share lanes with the turning cars. :(

I'd have a motorcycle in a second if everyone I knew with one wasn't seriously injured at some point.

Re:Very large surface area needed

[somersault]

Aye.. I had one and crashed a couple of times in the first two weeks! I then had no more accidents (though the bike was a total mess) for a couple more months til it got stolen. I've been considering getting another now that I've completed some advanced driver training and trust my observational skills a bit more, as well as learning about observing the 'limit point' when cornering which helps a lot for judging the severity of bends on roads you don't know. I find left hand bends (would be right hand bends in the US as you drive on the right) are a nightmare on a bike because you can't see where you're going, and if the bend tightens, you're screwed (well, unless you're an experienced rider perhaps, which I wasn't)!

Gotta love this gene splicing technology

[falsemover]

Ingenious - I love this gene transfer and splicing stuff. These scientists should get a Nobel prize for this, this is way cooler than dynamite or nitroglycerine. How quickly can we get this ultra fuel into the mainstream. I hope it's quicker than those ultra efficient solar cells you can print onto any surface that were meant to revolutionize renewable energy - it's been years and I haven't heard hide nor hair of them. Anyone got an update on that tech?

Re:Gotta love this gene splicing technology

[Rogerborg]

I imagine that what they'll get is a horse's head in their bed, courtesy of InterGlobalPetroCorp.

Re:Gotta love this gene splicing technology

[tsotha]

That seems to be the problem with every story about revolutionary technology. A mention on slashdot every couple years, then nothing.

Re:Gotta love this gene splicing technology

[Hognoxious]

They're still workin on the linux drivers. But don't worry, this year really is *the* year.

Re:Gotta love this gene splicing technology

[Anonymous Coward]

first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women.

Re:Gotta love this gene splicing technology

[TapeCutter]

"These scientists should get a Nobel prize for this, this is way cooler than dynamite or nitroglycerine

The invention of dynamite provided the endowment to establish the prize.

Alfred Nobel was a nerd, he loved explosions and was utterly oblivious to human nature. He thought dynamite was so powerfull that people would never use it as a weapon even in all out war. The offer of a peace prize can be seen as anknowledgement by Nobel that he failed to shock people out of fighting each other, OTHOH his delusional view of human nature was the precursor of the current MAD strategy of international politics.

Re:Gotta love this gene splicing technology

[fritsd]

Dynamite is made of dead cyanobacteria, you insensitive clod!

Re:Gotta love this gene splicing technology

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

Holy revisionist history Batman! You do realize papa Nobel made oodles of money manufacturing sea mines for the Russians during the Crimean War. So I don't think he was quite as "oblivious to human nature" as you claim he was.

Re:Gotta love this gene splicing technology

[Starvingboy]

That argument always sounded like a fallacy to me. "I never thought people would ACTUALLY use the uber-cool weapon I built" sounds like what you would say to placate the peaceniks just before you point it at 'em to get them off your lawn.

Re:Gotta love this gene splicing technology

[TapeCutter]

You bring up a good point Robin, perhaps he acted out of guilt and made that argument to sooth his concience.

Re:Gotta love this gene splicing technology

[falsemover]

whoo harr, a sugar daddy always gets the wimmin

RIP grain-based biofuels

[Anonymous Coward]

The improved efficiency and simplicity of this makes ethanol biofuel from grains economically unviable.

PJ

I'm so proud because...

[Per Abrahamsen]

This article has not been labeled "whatcouldpossiblygowrong".

Re:I'm so proud because...

[$RANDOMLUSER]

This article has not been labeled "whatcouldpossiblygowrong".

<yoda> It will be. It will be. /<yoda>

Seriously, let's not forget that cyanobacteria were responsible for the the single most devastating environmental catastrophe (oh, and by the way, killed (almost) ALL other life) in the history of the planet - changing the atmosphere from a reducing one to an oxidizing one. To suggest that this could turn into some kind of biological grey-goo isn't that far-fetched.

Re:I'm so proud because...

[dedalus2000]

so your saying cyanobacteria were the catalyst for the formation of the earth as we know it. also it seems as if the incredible energy expenditures that would be required of the modified bacteria would mean that they would actually be less prolific than their non excess sugar producing brethren also the organisms that feed on cyanobacteria may actually be benefited by the higher energy content of their food source. all of this should be established experimentally of course.

Precision in Reporting ...

[the bluebrain]

Starts out well ...

AUSTIN, Texas -- A newly created microbe [...]

OK, I severely doubt that. AFAIK, it hasn't happened yet that someone has fired up their pico-dremel, dipped it in a pool of amino acids, and spun a new life form. And if that were the case, that particular item would be the headline-cum-Nobel-prize, and not anything specific you could actually do with it.

So ...
- Maybe it was bred. Perhaps using something sexy like DNA splicing.
- More likely it was newly discovered.
- Most likely, it was identified from one of the nigh endless lists of prior discoveries of beasties that might do something useful, and refined by breeding.

OK, so not created.

Then, going on, it all sounds rather silver bullety. So just some sane basics:

- It's a method for gathering sunlight, like many others. As stated between the lines of TFA, there is a certain amount of sunlight that might be gathered that makes it through the atmosphere and hits earth. This is a good thing ... but considering the amount of energy we as a species use today, mainly in form of oil, sunlight is limited. Or put differently: there's no way we're going to bait-and-switch the sun into doing the job oil does today.

- It's in a lab. A lab is in general a very clean place. The great outside, on the other hand, is a murderous place. Throughout the biosphere, from 11km down to about 6km up, any niche that any beasty might inhabit is fought over, and the winner takes the lion's share. So nice as it is that a beasty has been identified that might be the methadone for our oil, it's going to take same maintenance work for it to thrive. Work ... that is, energy. I'm not saying it's impossible, it just cuts into the efficiency. And at this point, no-one can tell us by how much. Think giant vats of goo that need to be kept lab-clean not to be taken over by the next-better contestant for the given yummy environmental niche. Think lots of people / robots / driving around, using lots of energy maintaining the vats.

Anyhow. Good news, good job, my car is still running on refined crude until further notice. Wake me up when this stuff is at the pumps at two bucks a gallon.

[no, I'm always this grumpy, thanks for asking]

Re:Precision in Reporting ...

[ozmanjusri]

[no, I'm always this grumpy, thanks for asking]

Maybe not, but grumpy reflexes are a good thing to have when evaluating stories like this.

These guys have been touting the same cyanobacteria for years, first as a replacement for paper, now as an alternative fuel.

Given that cellulose is a poor fuel feedstock to start with, I'd suggest they'll have even less success this time around.

Re:Precision in Reporting ...

[cosmicaug]

It looks like they they need to control the simple sugar secretion problem. This is not only an organism which wastes energy (from its "perspective") for no good reason by making cellulose but also an organism which is considerate enough to potential competitors to give them an easy to use energy source in the form of simple sugars.

The former (the part we want) makes the organism weak but might be manageable. The latter, makes the organism "stupid" and, if it produces large enough quantities of simple sugars to sustain high densities of other microbes feasting on simple sugars, suicidal since secondary metabolites (or simply overwhelmingly high numbers of competitors) will probably make a population of this organism unsustainable.

Re:Precision in Reporting ...

[arotenbe]

It's a method for gathering sunlight, like many others. As stated between the lines of TFA, there is a certain amount of sunlight that might be gathered that makes it through the atmosphere and hits earth. This is a good thing ... but considering the amount of energy we as a species use today, mainly in form of oil, sunlight is limited. Or put differently: there's no way we're going to bait-and-switch the sun into doing the job oil does today. The Sun produces a lot of energy. If we had some super-efficient way of converting sunlight to usable energy, we could replace oil for most uses. Lack of energy from the Sun is not the problem - efficiency and limited funding is.

On an unrelated note, I'd like to point out the last lines of TFA:

Brown and Nobles are now researching the best methods to scale up efficient and cost-effective production of cyanobacteria. Two patent applications, 20080085520 and 20080085536, were recently published in the United States Patent and Trade Office. Patents on biological processes are never good. What are these patents and what does this mean?

Re:Precision in Reporting ...

[Yetihehe]

So, good for environment, as this organism will not spread like fire. It will be used in lab vats with very small possibilities of contamination.

Re:Precision in Reporting ...

[cosmicaug]

We can't make enough vats to make this practical.

Re:Precision in Reporting ...

[Yetihehe]

We can't make enough vats to make this practical.

The word is: yet.

Brown and Nobles are now researching the best methods to scale up efficient and cost-effective production of cyanobacteria. Two patent applications, 20080085520 and 20080085536, were recently published in the United States Patent and Trade Office.

Re:Precision in Reporting ...

[Foske]

AUSTIN, Texas -- A newly created microbe [...] G.W. Bush has become father again ????

Re:Precision in Reporting ...

[cosmicaug]

The BBC article (which is misreporting the endosymbiont hypothesis badly enough to make Lynn roll in her grave were she not still alive) was actually reporting on an article investigating homologies of cellulose synthases in several species of cyanobacteria. Curiously, the current U of Texas at Austin is not about harnessing native cellulose production by some cyanobacterium but rather about "Transgenic expression of Gluconacetobacter xylinus strain ATCC 53582 cellulose synthase genes in the cyanobacterium Synechococcus leopoliensis strain UTCC 100". I guess that they decided that inserting required cellulose biosynthetic enzymes from an organism (apparently) known to produce a lot of cellulose was easier than trying to optimize the miserly levels of cellulose biosynthesis in some cyanobacterium.

Re:Precision in Reporting ...

[Dynamoo]

So it's a weak organism.. until it mutates. Which these things have a habit of doing..

Re:Precision in Reporting ...

[budgenator]

- It's in a lab. A lab is in general a very clean place. The great outside, on the other hand, is a murderous place. Throughout the biosphere, from 11km down to about 6km up, any niche that any beasty might inhabit is fought over, and the winner takes the lion's share. So nice as it is that a beasty has been identified that might be the methadone for our oil, it's going to take same maintenance work for it to thrive. Work ... that is, energy. I'm not saying it's impossible, it just cuts into the efficiency. And at this point, no-one can tell us by how much. Think giant vats of goo that need to be kept lab-clean not to be taken over by the next-better contestant for the given yummy environmental niche. Think lots of people / robots / driving around, using lots of energy maintaining the vats.
[no, I'm always this grumpy, thanks for asking] In the past productivity has gone through the roof when they went outside, even the article said a 17X increase was possible. in Arizona an algae CO2 capture plant had to be shut down because the bioreator's production increase overwhelmed the processing plant! Give them a chance and let's see what happens in the real world.

Re:Precision in Reporting ...

[maxume]

Venter won the last round of betting against him(human genome project), we'll see what happens this time:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/227

Re:Precision in Reporting ...

[ichigo 2.0]

And evolution will make sure that the mutations that survive are the ones we want the least, i.e. those unable to produce biofuels. Thus rendering them useless.

Re:Precision in Reporting ...

[cosmicaug]

That should have been "... is misreporting the endosymbiont hypothesis badly enough to make Lynn Margulis roll..." rather than "... is misreporting the endosymbiont hypothesis badly enough to make Lynn roll...".

Re:Precision in Reporting ...

[darkfire5252]

Being grumpy is fun and all, but is solving the 'clean room problem' really all that difficult to envision? Popular Science was on this topic quite some time ago (the startup in the article was experimenting with algae as the producer of fat). From PopSci:

Sears's solution was inspired by the most humble of kitchen implements, the Ziploc bag. Clear plastic sacks, he realized, would let in enough light to help the algae thrive yet prevent unwanted species from invading. The crux of his innovation is his design for a full-scale algae "reactor." Two 350-foot-long parallel tracks about three feet apart hold the bags in place. Custom-built rollers occasionally squeeze them like tubes of toothpaste, circulating the algae; a current gives them the intermittent sun exposure they need to flourish. Once the algae is grown, a refinery extracts its oil and converts it to biodiesel.

Re:Precision in Reporting ...

[Anonymous Coward]

So it's a weak organism.. until it mutates. Which these things have a habit of doing..

These are Cyanobacteria we're talking about. They aren't going to have a point mutation and suddenly become the next black plague. There are hundreds of thousands of other kinds of bacteria living on your skin right now that are just as likely (if not more so) to mutate into a threatening organism as the cyanobacteria in question.

As a general rule, people need to stop citing movies like "I Am Legend" and "Outbreak" as evidence that we Don't Know What We're Getting Ourselves Into .

Re:Precision in Reporting ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not unless we apply selective pressure against the mutants.

Re:Precision in Reporting ...

[flyingfsck]

Hmm, a brew of that schtuff will likely result in beer with some cellulose in it which might give Kellogs' All Bran pause.

Re:Precision in Reporting ...

[alta]

Transgenic expression of Gluconacetobacter xylinus strain ATCC 53582 cellulose synthase genes in the cyanobacterium Synechococcus leopoliensis strain UTCC 100 WTF? You must do this for a living! I can't understand the title, much less the article.

Re:Precision in Reporting ...

[torkus]

Actually you don't need super-high efficiency in converting solar to usable energy. There's a huge amount of energy hitting the ground.

Ignoring clouds, the average insolation for the Earth is approximately 250 watts per square meter (6 (kWh/m)/day) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insolation)

Based on other posts they idea microbe needs 20m acres. Let's see what solar energy that gives us.

20m acres = ~81B/m2 * 6kWh/day/m2 = 486billion kWh per day or 486,000 GWh/day = 177,390,000 GWh/year

Let me say that again: 177,390,000 GWh. In 2005 Total U.S. electricity generation was 4,054,688 GWh

Those are rough numbers but even if you lower it by HALF and then only get 10% efficiency in conversion you've still out-produced the entire USA. Of course, we'd rather dump billions upon billions into elegant solutions (oh, and the war on terror) that have produced basically nothing than actually DOING something on a noticable large scale.

Re:Precision in Reporting ...

[AdamThor]

The problem being that all of the energy incident on the earth does something.

That energy makes plants, or heats something up. If we extract that energy for our own use then we leave something else without that energy.

Who will lose out? Tough to say.

Re:Precision in Reporting ...

[Glimmerdark]

the trick isn't so much producing the energy. it's storing it. people don't care that you can create enough energy to power the US with a section of desert in AZ, they want to know how they can run their car all year in maine. putting solar cells on the car at this point is just not practical, most definitely not in sub ideal regions. Electricity is wonderful, great in fact. leaps and bounds have been made with electric motors, manufacturing materials, etc. the place it all falls apart is with energy storage. batteries still lack. horribly expensive, short life expectancy, and charge times. when it takes longer than 10 minutes to 'fill up', and it's not easy to do on the road, joe public isn't going to go for it. what i'd like to see is some lower cost efficient generator options. so that electric motor cars could start functioning on the road, and work on a more permanent power storage solution once there's more demand.

Re:Precision in Reporting ...

[torkus]

Well actually there's some fun thermodynamics laws that disagree with you.

You can't destroy energy. You can store, perhaps, it but it's still energy (unless it becomes mass! ha).

We might tie some of that energy up in creating or breaking molecular bonds but so do plants. The possible effect on a very very large scale over long term would be global cooling. If you wind up tying up enough energy in non-heat you're taking that bit out of the what heats the earth. But keep in mind the amount of EXCESS energy we've released that was stored millions or billions of years ago in fossil fuels or nuclear. We would have to store an excessive amount of solar energy just to balance what we're dumping back into the atmosphere from the distant past.

Re:Precision in Reporting ...

[torkus]

We already have the answer for semi-permanant power storage in the next ~10-20 years. Take your pick of ethanol, butanol, H2, etc. etc. etc.

If you have excess power available, start making synthetic fuel. Heck, that's what Bush was going on and on about to start with in his hydrogen ecconomy...except he didn't have the excess power.

Battery technology is still a few orders of magnitude behind molecular storage (oil for example) and, in it's current form, will never catch up. Why? Because our current molecular storage medium is combined with universally available resources (e.g. air), consumed and discarded (tailpipe) through use. Batteries OTOH are required to be entirely self-contained and nothing can be discarded along the way. Think if you had to carry your oxidizer and also contain your waste product with an internal combustion engine.

Re:Precision in Reporting ...

[adisakp]

AUSTIN, Texas -- A newly created microbe [...]

OK, I severely doubt that. AFAIK, it hasn't happened yet that someone has fired up their pico-dremel, dipped it in a pool of amino acids, and spun a new life form.

- Maybe it was bred. Perhaps using something sexy like DNA splicing.

If splicing DNA isn't creating new (as in previously non-existant) life form what is it? For that matter, breeding can create new lifeforms (mutation, breeding, and natural selection have created nearly all the lifeforms on this planet AFAIK). Breeding is using a directed biological process (selective reproduction) and the other (DNA-splicing) is the equivalent of twiddling around with life using your pico-dremel.

Re:Precision in Reporting ...

[dedalus2000]

that's like saying evolution will make sure that dairy cows will be more likely to survive if they produce less milk. this is exactly the opposite of reality in reality the largest selection pressure placed on the bovine species is that which is applied by humanity in selective breeding. similarly those vats that produce the most usable fuels would likely be the ones that are used to seed additional vats. over time the selection pressures would lead to higher sugar and cellulose production not lesser.

Re:Precision in Reporting ...

[LunaticTippy]

That's why I love fuel cells. You get the benefit of a non-closed system without all the horrible moving parts and inefficiency of an ICE.

Re:Precision in Reporting ...

[ichigo 2.0]

I assumed that the GPP meant that the bacteria could mutate in a way that makes it better able to survive outside of a laboratory. If he meant it in a "fuel problem solved, I'll grow these in a pool of slime in my yard" or in a "oh shit we're all gonna DIE!" kind of way, I do not know.

Re:Precision in Reporting ...

[toddhisattva]

if it produces large enough quantities of simple sugars to sustain high densities of other microbes feasting on simple sugars What you see as a problem, yeast and me see as an opportunity!

Re:Precision in Reporting ...

[toddhisattva]

Let me expand an acronym for you -

Read The Fucking Article!

It's easier than guessing.

Re:Precision in Reporting ...

[quantaman]

Starts out well ...

AUSTIN, Texas -- A newly created microbe [...]

OK, I severely doubt that. AFAIK, it hasn't happened yet that someone has fired up their pico-dremel, dipped it in a pool of amino acids, and spun a new life form. And if that were the case, that particular item would be the headline-cum-Nobel-prize, and not anything specific you could actually do with it.

So ...
- Maybe it was bred. Perhaps using something sexy like DNA splicing.
- More likely it was newly discovered.
- Most likely, it was identified from one of the nigh endless lists of prior discoveries of beasties that might do something useful, and refined by breeding. This sounds pretty close
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/227

Re:Precision in Reporting ...

[TheSync]

20m acres = ~81B/m2 * 6kWh/day/m2 = 486billion kWh per day or 486,000 GWh/day = 177,390,000 GWh/year

Let me say that again: 177,390,000 GWh. In 2005 Total U.S. electricity generation was 4,054,688 GWh

A modern nuclear reactor needs about 200 acres.

20m acres = 100,000 nuclear reactors = 100 TWe. They tend to operate at full power 80% of the time, so 365*24*100TWe = 700 PWh per year versus your 177 PWh.

Alternatively, we could simply build 500 nuclear reactors (taking up ~100,000 acres) to take care of US electrical needs.

Re:Precision in Reporting ...

[torkus]

Except for waste heat. Solar takes energy out of the local enviornment. Nuclear generates about twice the waste heat as it generates (~30-35% efficiency in commercial LWR). I wouldn't want to see what 1400PWh/year would do to that 31,000 square miles.

No argument nuclear can achieve greater power density though. I'm actually a huge fan of nuclear power. It's hear, it works, it's not evil like many believe, and it's cheaper than oil/gas while being far cleaner than coal. Solar is not any of those things on a large scale other than perhaps clean (depending on the manufacturing). I'm looking forward to the day that it is though!

Re:Precision in Reporting ...

[F34nor]

Ok, for the record crude is in fact solar energy. The only question is what is the most efficent way to capture that energy. Solar cells hell no. Simple biological organisms? Hell yes,

This is why I think algae growing on sewage run through Conagra/Changing World Technology's TDP is going to be the best solution. Take a waste stream, add a primary producer, and then add sunlight. You have just added a great deal of energy to something that would be cost effective as is as a seed for the TDP process. Then convert anything in the goo or left over shit into short carbon chains at 85% efficacy. No worries if you pollute the algae with a different strain because it is just going to be broken down into short carbons chains anyway. Then you can burn the output on site in a high efficiency generator and run the Co2 exhaust through the algae for recapture. No transport costs to speak of for electrons.

Re:Precision in Reporting ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you not been paying attention to gas prices lately? Try over three bucks per gallon.

Re:Precision in Reporting ...

[Atario]

It's a method for gathering sunlight, like many others. As stated between the lines of TFA, there is a certain amount of sunlight that might be gathered that makes it through the atmosphere and hits earth. This is a good thing ... but considering the amount of energy we as a species use today, mainly in form of oil, sunlight is limited. Or put differently: there's no way we're going to bait-and-switch the sun into doing the job oil does today.

It is estimated that the total amount of energy gained from fossil fuels since the start of civilization is equivalent to the same amount of energy we receive every 30 days from the sun.

So, no.

Microbes are the cows of the future!

[boombasticman]

They will produce gas, meat and plastic in bio-reactors. Thats the future! But don't think we can waste as much energy for cars when the oil is empty, because now we are really careless about our planets recources. Then we need to either go by train or use the video phone, when we want to visit someone.

Re:Microbes are the cows of the future!

[LaskoVortex]

They will produce gas, meat and plastic in bio-reactors.

If you frequent McDonald's, you already produce gas, meat, and plastic in a bio-reactor, so this isn't new technology.

Why, oh why..

[s31523]

Reading this article is encouraging, but I have to wonder, why oh why isn't more being done to find alternative ways to make ethanol. At this point $200.00 barrels of oil is not that far off. We should be doing a full court press on ethanol and ways to produce it without endangering food supplies. I am curious as to how much water it takes to produce the ethanol in the bacterial slurry, as water resources aren't so plentiful either.... Now, if the bacteria becomes scalable and able to salt water as its source, now we are talking.

Re:Why, oh why..

[Raptoer]

Because this is the real world. And in the real world we have these people, called politicians. It is their job to go out and get reelected every term. Which means that they need two things, money and votes. You get the money from oil companies, and the votes from dumb farmers in the midwest who think that corn ethanol is a great idea and ignoring the whole thing about food prices almost doubling from a year or two ago.

Re:Why, oh why..

[maxume]

I'll bet you a nickle that oil doesn't cross $150 in the next five years.

Cellulosic is being industrialized as we speak. People are noticing that butanol isn't nearly as polar as ethanol and has a higher energy density to boot. Junk to diesel processes seem to work. There is plenty being done; trying the 10,000 best ideas isn't necessarily better than trying the 500 best ideas.

Re:Why, oh why..

[budgenator]

they do grow in brackish or salt water, they are grown in bio-reactors, clear plastic tube filled with water and cyanobacterias and these things tend to go ape-shit when they scale up to production sized units. We could put them on roof tops and the side of buildings if things got bad enough.

Re:Why, oh why..

[Ogive17]

Um.. to "dumb farmers" corn based ethanol IS a good idea. Higher demand drives up the price for their corn, making them more money.

Sounds like you are the dumb one for not realizing why farmers are pimping their corn for ethanol.

And no, I'm not saying corn based ethanol is a good idea, because it's not.. I'm just saying to farmers in the mid-west it's a good thing because they make more revenue. I guess the sad thing is there are a large number of "super farms" that are owned by New York businessmen.

Re:Why, oh why..

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll take that bet (and buy 0.0003 barrels when the day comes)

Re:Why, oh why..

[maxume]

I pulled $150 out of my ass, but I'm not the only one(I searched on Boone Pickens, not $150):

http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2008/04/17/t-boone-pickens-says-oil-is-headed-to-125/

Other crazy predictions:

The dollar will stabilize over the next two years, at levels above where they are today.
Deep water drilling will provide some supply relief.
Demand increases will moderate.
The speculative component will be driven out of the price of oil by 2011(where it will be closer to $85 than $150).

Yeah, i know It is tough to read TFA

[someone1234]

From YFP (your frickin' post):
"So ...
- Maybe it was bred. Perhaps using something sexy like DNA splicing.
- More likely it was newly discovered.
- Most likely, it was identified from one of the nigh endless lists of prior discoveries of beasties that might do something useful, and refined by breeding.

OK, so not created."

From TFA:
"Nobles made the new cyanobacteria (also known as blue-green algae) by giving them a set of cellulose-making genes from a non-photosynthetic "vinegar" bacterium, Acetobacter xylinum, well known as a prolific cellulose producer."

Compare!

Re:Yeah, i know It is tough to read TFA

[the bluebrain]

Most likely, it was identified from [...] prior discoveries [...] and refined by breeding [...] using something sexy like DNA splicing
 
... compared to ...
 
  [...] made the new cyanobacteria [...] by giving them a set of [...] genes from [...] Acetobacter xylinum [...]
 
Cool. That's the first time I didn't RTFA and got it spot-on anyway.

Re:Yeah, i know It is tough to read TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

[...] you, pal.

Re:Yeah, i know It is tough to read TFA

[AdamThor]

"Spot on" would be a one-to-one, in-order correlation between what you said and what they did.

We have no bananas today...

[Anonymous Coward]

We have string beans
And onions
Cabashes and scallions
And all sorts of fruit and say

We have an old fashioned tomato
A Long Island potato

But yes, we have no bananas
We have no bananas today

Re:We have no bananas today...

[Archades54]

So you were here for Cyclone Larry?

Re:We have no bananas today...

[Yvan256]

The Banana King will be dissapointed to hear that.

Grey goo vs third world decimation

[amias]

I for one welcome our cellulose excreting overlords ....

but seriously this is a great development for biofuels as growing them will require the use of vast amounts of land . The current source of that would inevitably be land in third world countries that should (in all fairness) be used for growing their food.

Just in case anyone didn't know yet the biofuel dream would mean starving the world as their is not enough land for both food and fuel.

Alternative fuel is as much about ending our exploitation of poorer countries as it is about
reducing pollution.

Its got a fair way to go but its a good step , just
as long as it doesn't get patented.

Toodle-pip
Amias

Re:Grey goo vs third world decimation

[JudgeFurious]

I'm probably speaking out of ignorance here but wouldn't it be possible to locate something like this in a part of the world that's currently not producing food like say, the Sahara desert? It seems like we have conveniently located deserts on pretty much all (or at least most) of the populated continents right? Why can't we use those instead of places growing food?

Re:Grey goo vs third world decimation

[couchslug]

"Just in case anyone didn't know yet the biofuel dream would mean starving the world as their is not enough land for both food and fuel."

No, the biofuel dream would involve the world concentrating on good ecological stewardship coupled with raising appropriate crops.

If you consider what makes "poor" countries poor, it is the backward behaviors of their primitive citizens. Adults in those countries will have to make choices when the developed world rightly takes care of itself first. If my choice is between feeding foreigners or burning biofuels in my truck, said foreigners had better discover agriculture and family planning, _just_like_advanced_societies_.

Re:Grey goo vs third world decimation

[amias]

That would be the case if we in the 'developed' where not using the best land for our out of season crops and crippling their economies with third world debt.

Ever notice that when there is a famine in africa the export crops still keep leaving the country ?

So if china had more money than the U.S ( i'm guessing you are american by your attitude ) should they have a right to appropriate the best
growing land in america and manipulate your government ? No , so why should you be able to ?
If your answer is 'because we can' then watch out when your recession hits cause nobody will help.

THERE IS NOT ENOUGH LAND TO GROW BIOFUELS TO SUPPORT REPLACING OUR CURRENT LEVELS OF PETROL USAGE.

Re:Grey goo vs third world decimation

[couchslug]

"Ever notice that when there is a famine in africa the export crops still keep leaving the country ?"

Ever notice the corrupt African governments not blocking exports or imposing export tariffs? :)

As for the debt, that's simple. Don't borrow what you cannot afford to pay back, and consider defaulting or using
the leverage of being a debtor to get better repayment terms.

"If your answer is 'because we can' then watch out when your recession hits cause nobody will help."

It is, and they shouldn't, unless it is in their own best economic interest.

Recession is a necessary correction, and will coerce the US to adapt as it would refuse to do absent pressure!
Those adaptations include biofuels and using our domestic resources for our own benefit. Others will have to adapt in their turn.

Re:Grey goo vs third world decimation

[amias]

have a look at who took out the loans in the first place , more often than not its a puppet government
installed by a western country composed of people
who grew up in the west. Its hardly representative
of most of the population.

The problem with defaulting on the loans is that the WTO is then allowed to change laws in the countries in question , which results in manditory privatisation of national services to coporations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Agreement_on_Trade_in_Services

This deepens the debt by taking money out of
the contries and keeps them locked in to outside
control. The debt repayments dwarf any aid we
give .
http://www.oxfam.org.uk/resources/policy/debt_aid/bn_wbimf_blindspot.html

This is being done to provide cheap food and commodities in the west , the same will happen
with biofuels. Remember that the US owes lots of
money , would you like it if that happened to you ?

Toodle-pip
Amias

Re:Grey goo vs third world decimation

[Anonymous Coward]

Understand what you are getting at.. but you are writing it in the wrong article..
This new process in the article is something that doesn't require farmland to use.. so it has nothing to do with reducing the amount of food in poor countries as you would want to do it in the desert, near a salt lake etc....

Sun light gathering

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a method for gathering sunlight, like many others. As stated between the lines of TFA, there is a certain amount of sunlight that might be gathered that makes it through the atmosphere and hits earth. This is a good thing ... but considering the amount of energy we as a species use today, mainly in form of oil, sunlight is limited.
 

The amount of light that naturally comes down to Earth is limited, sure, but as we did with oil, we could develop tools to get more sunlight that the one that directly comes to us. Think of really BIG Mirrors in space pointing towards Earth. We could direct them all to the same point just to get even more free-energy!

Balancing the account

[theolein]

... have created a microbe capable of making cellulose, which can then be turned into ethanol.

Great. Now all we need is something to convert the carbon produced by burning the ethanol back into cellulose...

Hey, wait a second...

Re:Balancing the account

[Anonymous Coward]

Back up. Where was "the carbon produced"? Hint: The carbon cycle using fuel from this process is closed.

Issues with PETA, I'm sure ...

[krygny]

... that is, Protozoa for the Ethical Treatment of Amoebae. Humans don't have the right to enslave bacteria.

Re:Issues with PETA, I'm sure ...

[torchdragon]

At the Game Developer's Conference 2008 there was an inter species game design and Steve Meretzky's game idea helps further our bacterial/human relations.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17562

I for one will be pre-ordering a TrayStation to do my part in natural selection.

Mod Parent Down

[Anonymous Coward]

-1 Karma whore

Absolutely nothing relevant.

Scary Scientist

[ommadon]

Is anyone with me in believing that the scientist on the right of the picture just passed whatever is in the jar and is trying to stifle a major giggle? :D

And it only costs $10 to get back $1 in energy

[Anonymous Coward]

And it only costs $10 to get back $1 in energy. Another Slashdot moment in history...

Re:And it only costs $10 to get back $1 in energy

[pintpusher]

I don't know about your world, but in my world, we don't measure energy in dollars.

And, production costs always come down as scale goes up. I'm not advocating for or against this stuff, just pointing out the obvious.

The Vital Question

[Anonymous Coward]

How does it benefit the corporate farm lobby in the Midwest? If it doesn't, then this isn't going anywhere.

Congress's biofuel obsession is about doling out pork to the farmers, not about reducing oil consumption. That's why we don't import the more efficient and environmentally friendly ethanol from Brazil, instead of making it ourselves at zero net energy gain.

Not necessarily suicidal

[Moraelin]

It's not necessarily suicidal.

Cyanobacter are routinely part of lichens, which are a very weird mix of fungi and bacteria capable of photosynthesis. The fungi form a matrix in which the bacteria are trapped, and help collect minerals and moisture for the trapped bacteria.

The arrangement isn't entirely mutually beneficial, from the point of view of the individual bacteria, but from a propagating-the-genes point of view (which in evolution is the only one that matters at all) it does allow the bacteria to live and multiply in some places where it otherwise could not.

And the fungi aren't doing it as some kind of act of kindness, either: fungi can't do photosynthesis on their own, so those lichens growing on rocks and whatnot, well, would die if noone in that arrangement provided food for the fungi too. That's the bacteria's contribution there: those sugars.

At any rate, it's sorta like being inside a living test tube full of nutrients and water. If you don't produce an excess of sugars, the test tube dies. Clearly there's a survival advantage in avoiding that.

From another point of view, fungi are nasty critters, which can only live on organic matter produced by someone else. It may be parasitic (they take other cells apart and eat them) or they can live on dead matter, but nevertheless they absolutely need someone else to manufacture those nutrients for them. Most of those in lichens are a highly specialized and adapted form of parasite. They don't just live off the nutrients that the bacteria excrete, but actually poke the bacteria with tiny filaments and suck the nutrients right out of the living cell. The trapped bacteria are routinely killed in the process, but the colony survives by just allowing them to multiply faster than they're killed.

Again, it's a survival advantage to be able to produce enough of an excess of nutrients, so you can survive (and make enough of a reserve to divide too) even with 3-4 fungal cells around you, all living off you.

Re:Not necessarily suicidal

[Eccles]

At any rate, it's sorta like being inside a living test tube full of nutrients and water. If you don't produce an excess of sugars, the test tube dies. Clearly there's a survival advantage in avoiding that.

Just watch out for the bacteria Morpheus and Neo.

Re:Not necessarily suicidal

[bwcbwc]

And consider the brewery as well. The measures that brewers have to take to keep their strains of yeast pure are so well understood that people do it at home: 1) sanitize your containers, 2) disinfect/cook the source material. The fact that the bacteria/algae are producing sugar instead of consuming it is still a negative, but I don't see it as insurmountable in an industrial environment. We aren't going to have these things growing on trees, they're going to be in "refineries" under tightly-controlled (eventually, after an industrial accident or two) processes.

A bigger hurdle in my mind is the extraction and purification of the cellulose from the matrix of bacteria without killing the bacteria or wasting the cellulose. Maybe adding brewers' yeast to the mix would help in the extraction, as well as keeping the sugars down and producing ethanol directly. In fact, they should be working on boosting the sugar output at the expense of the cellulose output. The sugars are directly convertible to alcohol, while the cellulose would require additional reactions to break it down.

Re:Not necessarily suicidal

[khallow]

Most of those in lichens are a highly specialized and adapted form of parasite. The term is "symbiont" not "parasite". As you note, the cyanobacteria gets significant advantages from the arrangement.

Re:Not necessarily suicidal

[inviolet]

Again, it's a survival advantage to be able to produce enough of an excess of nutrients, so you can survive (and make enough of a reserve to divide too) even with 3-4 fungal cells around you, all living off you.

Ah yes, just like my real life.

That's because

[Kupfernigk]

Revolutionary technologies take 15-100 years to implement successfully. (in the case of civil fusion power, possibly longer).

Re:That's because

[Talderas]

In the case of fusion, use the following formula...

Years till Completion = (Current Year) + 20

Better options than biofuel from grain

[Lonewolf666]

TFA describes an approach with nice potential, but it seems to need a lot of work before it becomes commercially viable.
Another is oil from algae: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algaculture#Algae_as_an_energy_source
and it seems to be closer to commercial use.

What about carbon sequestration?

[BVis]

Has anyone seen any information regarding whether or not this process removes CO2 from the atmosphere in significant amounts? It would seem that if they're making carbohydrates (sugars) that this process would be pulling carbon from the environment to do it, which is another side benefit to the process if non-trivial. In other words, not only do we get usable fuel relatively cleanly, we remove greenhouse gases from the environment at the same time.

By the way, I'd like to remind people that how expensive a process is isn't always the only thing to consider.

Re:What about carbon sequestration?

[dhj]

Good point, but if we use this stuff for fuel won't we be burning it right back into the atmosphere? Maybe if we used what the bacteria are producing for food. Since they're producing glucose and sucrose I wonder what potential this has for creating a substitue for high-fructose corn syrup. Filter out the bugs, use the glucose for biofuel and the sucrose for food. Might as well use all the byproducts and putting a little bug sugar in your diet couldn't hurt, right?

Re:What about carbon sequestration?

[BVis]

Also a fair point, but I think there might be an advantage in the carbon loop there (bugs -> fuel -> burn fuel -> carbon -> bugs -> fuel etc) instead of taking carbon out of the ground and putting it in the atmosphere. All conjecture, of course.

Re:What about carbon sequestration?

[Thelasko]

but if we use this stuff for fuel won't we be burning it right back into the atmosphere? The problem with the way we currently do things is that we are digging up carbon from the ground to be burned and never used again. This process could potentially mean we would have a closed loop. We burn carbon based fuel, then bacteria converts it into fuel through photosynthesis, and repeat. The net effect is zero.

Re:What about carbon sequestration?

[krack]

By the way, I'd like to remind people that how expensive a process is isn't always the only thing to consider. Given, but cost/benefit analysis is the major hurdle of any project so being able to clear it is necessary to even start talking about it.

Re:What about carbon sequestration?

[BVis]

Just so long as the benefits don't ALL have dollar/euro/pound/yen/whatever signs in front of them.

Do not let the Pope find out

[MazzThePianoman]

Because genetic manipulation is a moral sin. http://www.catholic.org/featured/headline.php?ID=5429 I feel bad for the Catholics that have to take insulin . . . .

I am Legend!!

[alta]

Didn't you guys see I am Legend? I just saw it last weekend. This is a terrible Idea, they're going to develope a mutant strain of bacteria that will turn all 'designated' corn into fuel. Then in a few years it will turn all the plants, not just the corn into human eating vegimonsters that will devower all people and force us to live in New Hampsher in a walled colony with just the few vegetables (asparagus, brussel sprouts) that are immune. That is until a super smart plant in manhattan develops are cure and is killed right after it's made. Luckily he attached it to a few dandylion seeds that floated to NH so the cure was not lost.

No Thanks, I'll just keep burning oil!

Re:I am Legend!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Caught "I am Legend" on the inflight entertainment during a recent plane trip ... I think that as I get older I'm losing my tolerance for facile, formulaic hollywood pap.

Re:verticle (interesting)

[Dare nMc]

go vertical like this http://www.verticalfarm.com/

sounds like the biosphere (wasn't completely successful.) Wouldn't going verticle shade the same amount of land as going horizontal. So you could either stack the people up vertically and leave the horizontal space for the plants (current citys and farms layout), or stack the plants up vertically and leave the horizontal space for humans. IE stacking a bunch of tall buildings close together they will shade each other. However if only one farmer stacks his 20 acres up a mile high, he'll only be stealing small sections of light (varies throughout the day) from his neighbors, likely no issue, unless more than a few in the same area try to do the same.

HEY!!

[clonan]

Whats wrong with asparagus??

Re:HEY!!

[Eccles]

Whats wrong with asparagus??

It makes your pee smell funny.

Sugar Cane

[Anonymous Coward]

Duh! Use sugar cane instead of corn.

Corn or any other grain needs to be malted at 140 F in water to convert the starch into a form that can be metabolized by yeast to make alcohol... probably at least 10 gallons of water for every gallon of alcohol ultimately produced.

Sugar cane juice can feed the yeast directly because it contains.... SUGAR!

If room temp is 75 degrees then you can imagine a bunch of energy is expended heating so many gallons of water to 140 degrees.

The only reason we aren't already doing this is the large "installed base" of corn farmers.

Go 'Horns!

[es330td]

As a Texas-Ex, I have to add "How about them Longhorns!"

I know this is only in a lab but I've been of the opinion for a long time that the solution to some of our problems would come from the biology side of the house. The CO2 content of the atmosphere could be significantly reduced if we could only turn CO2 gas into solid carbon. We don't really even know *how* to do this and yet simple plants do it every day using nothing more expensive than solar power. A bacteria or algae that consumes CO2 and produces fuel would be the ultimate in low impact yet renewable fuel. It isn't perpetual motion because it uses energy from the sun but last time I checked that isn't running out, situated in violent third world companies or consuming any non-renewable resources that have to be dug or pumped out of the ground.

Yes, it'd 'suck' CO2

[Firethorn]

Indeed it would pull CO2 from the air in the process. Burning it as fuel would release it again.

This would be considered a renewable fuel. This seems to be a variation on the proposals I've seen for vast farms of algae/plankton etc... You set up the systems out in the desert somewhere, draw off the growth and process it into fuel, whether that be ethanol or biodiesel.

The quirk here is that you can apparently harvest without taking/killing the bacteria, which is an interesting twist. I wonder how you filter out the cellulose and glucose and stuff without killing the bacteria? I'd imagine a filter small enough to catch the bacteria would clog quickly and easily, or the bacteria would tend to pile up and have the first ones end up crushed.

Maybe it's some sort of gravitational seperation system.

Re:Yes, it'd 'suck' CO2

[Hatta]

I'd expect some sort of centrifuge. At least, that's how bacteria are usually separated from liquid medium in the lab.

Re:Yes, it'd 'suck' CO2

[aurispector]

Sort of tangential but interesting. If you seed a tank full of water with the bacteria, wouldnt they simply reproduce in fairly short order? Why would it be necessary to even filter out the algae? Just pump the cellulose rich fluid into a reactor along with whatever bug you're going to use to to ferment the cellulose & sugar into ethanol then somehow (distillation?) separate the ethanol. The remaining sludge would probably have some value, too.

Re:Yes, it'd 'suck' CO2

[Firethorn]

I'd tend to go with a gravity system as being gentler to the bacteria and ultimately cheaper.

As the other poster mentioned; a good point is that it's not a 'all bacteria MUST survive extraction', if even 10% survive, it might only be a couple days until they're back to the old population level.

Closed Cycle

[Thelasko]

Combining this technology with algae after treatments like those used by GreenFuel Technologies and you have a true closed carbon cycle. Greenfuel uses sunlight and CO2 from power plants to grow massive amounts of algae. The algae grows rapidly because of high concentrations of CO2 and large surface area of the bubbletubes.

Re:Closed Cycle

[evilviper]

Greenfuel uses sunlight and CO2 from power plants to grow massive amounts of algae.

And it only takes THOUSANDS of acres of land, with the ample sunlight in the desert, to convert all the CO2 from ONE power plant...

Good plan!

Well at lest we have options coming

[evolutionary]

Truth be told we need a few more options badly. Ethynol is inefficient to product in more ways than one: It takes more energy to product it than we get from it, and its driving corn prices through the roof. Of course given all the BS the US has been giving off on alternative fuel sources up until recently, you'd think we have an ample supply of methane to sustain our power consumption. ;-)

Could also solve the distribution problem

[Joce640k]

At the moment we burn huge amounts of fuel just moving our fuel around to different places.

Localized 'fuel farming' could greatly reduce this waste.

Cry BS

[Anonymous Coward]

Since there seems to be consensus among scientists that corn based ethanol blows, and on the other hand there seems to be a consensus that thermal solar works well, why not invest in that, and if the farmers of the midwest want more welfare, we just send them checks, and at least be honest about it?

Re:Cry BS

[toddhisattva]

there seems to be consensus among scientists that corn based ethanol blows That's because they are not drinking it!

Re:Cry BS

[theophilosophilus]

Since there seems to be consensus among scientists that corn based ethanol blows This is overstated - corn ethanol produces a net energy gain (even when the detractors factor in cost of production and transportation, a calculation that is not made on any other form of energy including oil). The comment is correct that there are much better ways of producing ethanol and the corn lobby is distorting production.

on the other hand there seems to be a consensus that thermal solar works well, why not invest in that This is also slightly overstated. There are pros and cons to every energy alternative. Why not emphasize the strengths of each by a hybrid approach? By utilizing ALL alternatives we can make a much bigger dent in fossil fuel usage. High energy prices means the economics of solar became much more attractive.

if the farmers of the midwest want more welfare, we just send them checks, and at least be honest about it? Farm subsidies originated as a way to maintain cheep food. Globalization has kind of made that a moot issue. Now subsidies are a method of control of a voting block for farm state senators.

Yes, well...

[Moraelin]

Yes, well, I know the term "symbiont", I'm just sorta weary of applying it to that kind of an arrangement.

It's just about akin to our relationship with Broiler chicken: we breed them by the millions in cramped dark spaces, slaughter them wholesale, eat them, and keep just enough of them around to lay enough eggs for the next batch of chickens. Repeat every couple of weeks, because we selected the ones which grow that incredibly fast. (Let's just say that most of what goes into a McChicken still has blue eyes and talks in peeps, because it really never got out of the chick phase by the time it grew big enough to be slaughtered.)

I'm not an animal rights activist, but I wouldn't exactly call that a mutually benefficial symbiosis. Yes, technically the chicks get fed without any effort on their part, more numbers of them exist at any given time than would survive in the wild by themselves even in ideal conditions, etc. _Technically_ we're doing something for them too, as our part of the deal. But, make no mistake, we're still the predator and they're still the prey.

Or to put it otherwise, in the Hansel And Grettel story (you know, the one with the gingerbread house), there is no symbiosis between those two kids and the witch who tries to fatten them to eat them. You could say that technically the witch feeds them, and they're expected to provide a meal for her in return, so it's all fair and a perfect symbiosis. Dunno, I see it as rather less fair and mutually-benefficial.

Pretty much that's what goes on between the fungus and the bacteria in a lichen.

Technically it is a symbiosis. But equally technically seen, the fungus doesn't act that horribly different from any other kind of a parasitic fungus, when it pokes the cell and eats its contents.

Re:Yes, well...

[khallow]

It's just about akin to our relationship with Broiler chicken: we breed them by the millions in cramped dark spaces, slaughter them wholesale, eat them, and keep just enough of them around to lay enough eggs for the next batch of chickens. Repeat every couple of weeks, because we selected the ones which grow that incredibly fast. (Let's just say that most of what goes into a McChicken still has blue eyes and talks in peeps, because it really never got out of the chick phase by the time it grew big enough to be slaughtered.)

I'm not an animal rights activist, but I wouldn't exactly call that a mutually benefficial symbiosis. Yes, technically the chicks get fed without any effort on their part, more numbers of them exist at any given time than would survive in the wild by themselves even in ideal conditions, etc. _Technically_ we're doing something for them too, as our part of the deal. But, make no mistake, we're still the predator and they're still the prey.

I see the analogy as broken. The chickens aren't really benefiting from their arrangement with humans. Sure it beats going extinct, but they've undergone substantial genetic winnowing. Due to human interference they actually have a reduced ecological range and there's always the chance they go extinct if humans tire of chicken. In comparison, the lichen symbiosis can live in places that neither the fungus nor cyanobacteria could by themselves. Second, the fungus provides shelter and the algae provides food, that's a straightforward symbiotic relationship. I bet the fungus can't easily switch algae species too. That is, the fungus and algae "share destiny". If one species dies, the other does too. That's a sure sign of symbiosis.

Re:

[clint999]

According to the article, the approximate area needed to produce ethanol with corn to fuel all U.S. transportation needs is around 820,000 square miles, an area almost the size of the entire Midwest.

Re:verticle (interesting)

[beckerist]

Vertical farms use lights that emit little green light, so the plants absorb the most energy with the least amount of external energy spent. I've not yet seen a design that merely utilizes solar energy: this is a picture of a proposed design at night:
http://www.verticalfarm.com/images/design/chris/thum/chris_jacobs_night.jpg

They commonly refer to methane recycling to make up for the need to draw from the power grid though.

It's already pretty high

[QMO]

Arguably, one could say that the only way Utah can go is up... Only Colorado and Wyoming have higher average altitudes (among US States).

Re:It's already pretty high

[Adriax]

Yeah, wyoming is pretty high. A couple years ago the local dairy queen got shut down for having a meth lab in the basement and selling it out their drive thru.

Actually, that's where it breaks down

[Moraelin]

Actually, that's what makes me wonder more: the fungus can't live without the bacteria. The bacteria can live perfectly well without the fungus. Maybe not in the same places, but they can.

First steps...

[Firethorn]

Well, the first step in a algae, bacterial, etc... solution would be to use artificial means for producing them, such as trays out somewhere in the desert. You simply pump in seawater if your process can use salt water. Many designs I saw were fairly water neutral, only needing enough to replace the liquid fuel being shipped out(the H in the hydrocarbons comes from water, so that water has to be replaced). That way it's not in the ocean.

As you'd be controlling everything, the problems you point out shouldn't happen. One I remember is that you have feedstock(algae and nutrient water mix) enter one side of a 'stack'. Over time the water/algae mix moves down the stack until it's harvested at the bottom. Some of the algae is seperated and sent back to the top of the stack to keep that going.

Could even be a bit 'U' shape to keep that part short.

And yes, variable compression ratio would be a good idea, and might actually allow you to run either gasoline or ethanol efficiently. Still, I'm of the mind that the most efficient ethanol engine will still be a dedicated ethanol engine. Variable compression would still help, of course. Might become common simply due to the transition phase.

Available solar energy...

[ztcamper]

Unless Wikipedia article about solar power is completely and utterly mistaken, the amount of solar power that reaches Earth surface exceeded amount of energy consumed by entire human civilization in 2004 by the factor of 8174.

That would imply that less then 0.5% of earth surface dedicated to collection of solar power using nothing but sterling engine (30% efficiency) would be required to meet the demands of entire human race in 2004.

Wow! Now that is some error!

As far as bacteria and biofuels go... well screw that. If US government has invested war money into R&D there would be no oil problem... anywhere.