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Company Claims Potential Magnification In Bio Fuel Production

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the burn-it-all dept.

duanes1967 writes "A company called Joule Biotech claims to have a breakthrough in biofuel production. Their process can create 20,000 gallons of fuel per acre per year at a cost of about $50 per barrel. 'Algae-based biofuels come closest to Joule's technology, with potential yields of 2,000 to 6,000 gallons per acre; yet even so, the new process would represent an order of magnitude improvement. What's more, for the best current algae fuels technologies to be competitive with fossil fuels, crude oil would have to cost over $800 a barrel says Philip Pienkos, a researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO. Joule claims that its process will be competitive with crude oil at $50 a barrel. In recent weeks, oil has sold for $60 to $70 a barrel.'"

3 of 260 comments (clear)

  1. Uhh, Heavily Bought Into By Oil Industry by eldavojohn · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ... begging for money that comes up with these "revolutionary" breakthroughs. Did we not learn anything from the tech boom/bust?

    Whenever there is a lot of government money flowing into an industry, there is never a shortage of snake-oil salesmen lining up to grab a piece of it. There really isn't a limit to what they will say they can do.

    You may want to inform Exxon Mobil that their recent six hundred million dollar investment is snake oil.

    Big oil's investing in this, I wouldn't write it off as snake oil:

    • ExxonMobil - Venter, Synthetic Genomics
    • BP - just announced a partnership with DuPont to develop butanol; Qteros, Verenium, Synthetic Genomics
    • Valero - purchased seven VeraSun plants out of bankruptcy earlier this year; Qteros, ZeaChem, Solix
    • Marathon - Mascoma (also backed by GM)
    • Shell - Iogen
    • Total - Gevo
    --
    My work here is dung.
    1. Re:Uhh, Heavily Bought Into By Oil Industry by amRadioHed · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Biofuels solve two major problems, they are carbon neutral and they are not dependent on the middle east. Are the problems they create worse than those?

      --
      We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
  2. Re:It's always a startup... by interkin3tic · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ... begging for money that comes up with these "revolutionary" breakthroughs. Did we not learn anything from the tech boom/bust?

    Are you saying we were supposed to learn that revolutionary breakthroughs are ALWAYS snake-oil?