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GE Microbes Make Ersatz Crude Oil From Many Sources
polymath69 writes "According to The Times Online, genetically modified microbes have been developed capable of turning surplus material such as wood chips, sugarcane, or others, not into ethanol, but into a substance which could substitute directly for crude oil. They claim it could be sold for about $50/bbl, and the production process would be carbon negative."
Uh, the GE stands for Genetically Engineered, not General Electric....
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Insightful, huh? TFA, and even TFS, clearly say they won't be using crops, but agricultural waste.
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etc, ad nauseam.
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Ok. Scatological jokes aside : as E. Coli is a comensal bacteria, our body have evolved and got used to have it inside. We naturally have lots of means to control the important and diverse population of bacteria living in our guts - including having an immune system that keeps the bacteria on the "outside" side of the gut and not entering inside the body itself and including already having an amazing amount of bacteria already living there and leaving less free place for new comers.
The only exception if one of the newcomer specie that comes into the gut is producing some toxin (food poisoning is actually due to the toxin, not the bacteria themselves. Often the bacteria don't survive digestion or are already dead to begin with - that's why charcoal and yeast are more efficient than antibiotics to handle them).
This GE bacteria is simply fermenting garbage into something that looks like oil. You may develop a mild diarrhoea, but there aren't horrible self-digesting-into-a-small-pile-of-gunk short-term risks of having oil in your guts, and the usual defences will take care that it all stays in the gut.
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Cell walls tend to make up between 15 and 30% of the dry mass of an organism.
The composition of it depends on what type of organism they use. Plant cells would result in cellulose waste, yeast cells, protein and chitinous material, bacteria would most likely be polysaccharides or lipids.
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lab E. coli strains != pathogenic E. coli
I work w/ lab E. coli every day and have never gotten sick from it and I'm sure I've ingested a few of them in my lifetime.
Well, except it's happened provably in two places and it's now happening to the world as a whole.
Starting in 1974, oil output from Texas oil fields began declining 4-ish percent per year. Despite the deployment of every available technology and minimal to almost no drilling restrictions, the decline continues. The same thing happened in the North Sea in 2000: Production peaked, and now production there has been falling about 4 to 5 percent per year for 8 years.
At this time, there is virtually no spare capacity in the middle east to pump more oil. Any that they can bring online will go more to covering rapid declines in North Sea output than increasing supply. The Saudis were hoping to increase production by about 1.2 million barrels/day this year, and it looks as if they'll be doing damn well to get another 500 thousand; We're looking at a loss next year.
The peak is real and most likely imminent.