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Biotech Company Making Fossil Fuels With a 'Library' of Bacteria
Saysys sends an excerpt from a story at the Globe and Mail:
"In September, a privately held and highly secretive US biotech company named Joule Unlimited received a patent for 'a proprietary organism' – a genetically engineered cyanobacterium that produces liquid hydrocarbons: diesel fuel, jet fuel and gasoline. This breakthrough technology, the company says, will deliver renewable supplies of liquid fossil fuel almost anywhere on Earth, in essentially unlimited quantity and at an energy-cost equivalent of $30 (US) a barrel of crude oil. It will deliver, the company says, 'fossil fuels on demand.' ... Joule says it now has 'a library' of fossil-fuel organisms at work in its Massachusetts labs, each engineered to produce a different fuel. It has 'proven the process,' has produced ethanol (for example) at a rate equivalent to 10,000 US gallons an acre a year. It anticipates that this yield could hit 25,000 gallons an acre a year when scaled for commercial production, equivalent to roughly 800 barrels of crude an acre a year."
Now we just need a bacterial fuel additive to eliminate CO2 emissions :)
And invest 50 billion dollars into emerging technologies.
It's a good start but the costs need to be brought down to as cheap as possible.
Lets get China and India involved ASAP. :)
There was just an NCIS episode about this!
Scaling to commercial production is the hardest part of any biotech reactor setup. Outside the lab these need to survive incidental biocontamination, survive in high waste product concentration and variable temperatures long enough to produce economical amounts of diesel. Fixing all these problems can take just as long as the initial research and grind away at investment.
I'll believe it when I see it.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
Agreed. Just as corn/sugar can be converted into ethanol, or soybeans into biodiesel, this too can be considered a renewable fuel.
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How many times have people made bold claims like this? I'm guessing they are looking for investors err suckers. It's news when you have a commercially viable plant up and running. When I say commercially viable I don't mean with a $4 a gallon subsidy. Those yield figures are going to be wildly optimistic.
[...] a genetically engineered cyanobacterium that produces liquid hydrocarbons: diesel fuel, jet fuel and gasoline [...] in essentially unlimited quantity
Great, so now we have no limit on how much we can pollute. This is exactly what we need.
these guys have patented an organism which can inhale CO2 and use the energy from sunlight to turn it into hydrocarbons. Perhaps god will step up and point out s/he can claim prior art for inventing plants..
Korma: Good
So how do they power their own facility? Do they have a filling station for employee use?
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I know that sounds appealing. But it's interesting to think about what might happen if the single biggest source of wealth in the Middle East was suddenly worthless. Despite what you see on the news, the average middle easterner is, for the most part, the kind of person that John Stewart would describe as "Someone with shit to do." They live their lives, produce income, spend it, raise a family, etc. These activities would be severely disrupted if oil dropped back to $20 / barrel. All of the sovergn governments over there would collapse (some are in trouble even if oil drops to $60 a barrel, due to over-commitment from the $100+ days). And pre-surge iraq-style chaos would reign.
Yemen is a good example of what the entire middle east might look like if this happened. And, as the Joker famously said, Dynamite and Gasoline are cheap. The violent extremeists would still find ways to buy bullets and ammunition. But they'd have much more freedom to operate, and a much larger base of disenchanted population to recruit from.
...to be allowed to be patented.
Just imagine: Every couple would have to pay a licensing fee..
Umm, because bacteria, algae and plants make hydrocarbons in exactly this method? The problem is the steps involved to make these kinds of chemicals (gasoline) are generally waste products (from other reactions) which poison the algae, making it difficult to get high concentrations/ lots of production.
If it turns out that's how real "fossil" fuel is created underground... Now there's a secret worth keeping..
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I'm kindof afraid that current oil producers will want this project disappeared&forgotten..
The Joule technology requires no "feedstock," no corn, no wood, no garbage, no algae. Aside from hungry, gene-altered micro-organisms, it requires only carbon dioxide and sunshine to manufacture crude. And water: whether fresh, brackish or salt.
How can anyone with a high school chemistry education take this bullshit seriously?
People with a high school biology education know that CO2 + H20 + Sunlight = Sugar, thanks to the magic of photosynthesis and the Calvin Cycle. Sugar + anaerobic respiration = Ethanol, thanks to the magic of anaerobic ethanol fermentation. You can argue that their bioreactors will need nutrient supplementation to maintain viability, and you'd be right. Those are not feedstocks however, as you only need small amounts relative to product. It's not bullshit, it's science.
Surely they would just repurpose their last-mine distriubtion networks to transport petrol from the fuel farms to gas stations? They'd shrink as companies, but still have a place - unless they're smart and buy these guys out ASAP.
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Perhaps because that is actually a plausible combination of inputs for the production of hydrocarbons.
On the other hand, if we could just convert kudzu to oil they'd be all set right now.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
You're right! It's insane to think that any living organism can survive on sunlight, water and CO2. Excuse me, I need to go water my pot plants.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
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You can't eat a promised sandwich.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
The Joule technology requires no "feedstock," no corn, no wood, no garbage, no algae. Aside from hungry, gene-altered micro-organisms, it requires only carbon dioxide and sunshine to manufacture crude. And water: whether fresh, brackish or salt.
How can anyone with a high school chemistry education take this bullshit seriously?
Water is H2O. Add to that mixture CO2 and a bunch of energy (in this case, sunshine), and I believe that you could make pretty much any hydrocarbon you desire (with some amount of leftover O2).
So based on my understanding of organic chemistry, it sounds possible. Whether it's plausible is another question entirely...
coding is life
If these claim are correct, the resulting products might resemble current 'fossil' fuels but of course they are anything but fossil...
--frank[at]unternet.org
They're looking for investors, right?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
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of the pump and dump variety. Would it? :) Ahem.
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They were saying, in July 2009, http://gigaom.com/cleantech/the-solar-biofuel-hybrid-joule-biotechnologies-launches/ that they were going to build a pilot plant in 2010, and have the initial commercial-scale plant up in 2012.
All through 2010, their press releases talk about awards and management, funding and P.R. I would have expected "Pilot plant ground broken", "Pilot plant going online", "Pilot plant now giving free diesel to all plant employees, outside customers can pay $1.00 per gallon at plant filling station...".
What a work bennie that would be!
What is the patent number of the alleged patent?
(This sig intentionally left blank)
Their web site just screams "scam" Also, that $30 per barrel figure is bogus: "We estimate our costs for diesel to be as low as $30 per barrel equivalent. This is based on an industrial-scale plant of at least 1,000 acres, producing our commercial target of 15,000 gallons diesel/acre/year, and taking into account our total expected costs and existing, applicable credits.". In other words, even if it works, it's a scheme to exploit subsidies.
Also, they announced this before, 18 months ago, and still don't have a demo. They should at least be showing a panel or two by now.
It's not a fundamentally hopeless idea. It's basically a scheme for photosynthesis inside what look like hot-water solar heating panels. Photosynthesis is neither fast nor efficient. The theoretical maximum efficiency for solar powered photosynthesis is 11%. That's an upper limit, and the Joule people don't give the actual number for their process, which has to be lower. Photovoltaic panels are already above 11%.
It's not clear that their system would be much cheaper than photovoltaics per unit area. Half the cost of solar panel installations is in the installation job itself. Solar hot water heating panels that last for a decade or two aren't cheap. (The low-end ones tend to rot, be torn up in storms, or crack as the plasticizers are cooked out.) These guys aren't just heating; they have a chemical reaction going inside the things. They'll probably have to flush their system occasionally, and they'll need more pumps, plumbing, and controls than simple hot water panels.
Ethanol from cellulose (not corn) is probably more promising. That works now, but it's marginal on cost. It runs off agricultural waste like straw or cheap crops grown in open fields; you don't have to build giant farms of panels.
a genetically engineered cyanobacterium that produces liquid hydrocarbons: diesel fuel, jet fuel and gasoline
did they didn't mention the bacteria only eats human flesh?
Umm, because bacteria, algae and plants make hydrocarbons in exactly this method?
The problem is the steps involved to make these kinds of chemicals (gasoline) are generally waste products (from other reactions) which poison the algae, making it difficult to get high concentrations/ lots of production.
It isn't *that* hard. JC Venter's venture (cosponsored 49% by exxon mobil) uses algae that produce the fuels and secrete.
The secreted fuel then floats to the top of the bioreactor where it is readily skimmed/siphoned.
I am very much looking forward to not being beholden to various despicable middle eastern regimes simply because of what lies underneath their feet.
However i do wonder if those same places will remain valuable simply because of what lies above their heads, ie. the sun.
Responding to myself, since all the replies above are saying pretty much the same thing, so I'd like to answer them in bulk.
Yeah, you can produce hydrocarbons using H2O, CO2 and photosynthesizing organisms. But those organisms do need other nutrients, so the "no feedstock" bit can't be true.
Also, these guys make pretty extraordinary claims (quote: "50 times as efficient as conventional biofuel production"), and they won't tell anyone how they do it, because it's a trade secret. I wish this was true, but it just smells wrong.
Be smug when Middle Eastern oil is irrelevant to world prosperity, not now when the technology could well be snake oil.
So you're saying that we should hold back progress because some people in the middle east might become terrorists if we don't?
That doesn't sound to me like a good idea.
If they start a war over this, it's THEY'RE fault, not ours. To be honest I'm looking forward to the day when we can tell the middle eastern oil barons to pound sand, and become less dependent on them for our economy's survival.
Damnit, I can't edit the post. I accidentally used "they're" instead of their. Fail!
This makes me wonder about an economy that takes biological material and uses it to fuel inanimate extension and use.
It seems a little like the Matrix, where people are just biofuel for the machines. Since we have IBM Watson , bot nets, robots that kill, and drones that can operate independently, the Terminators need a continuous fuel supply to eradicate the last of those pests that infect their energy chain.
-- John Connor
if you can get snakes instead of bacteria to do it i guess that could work, sounds less safe though
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
I have often thought of that just as I have often wondered what happens to those economies when their recoverable supply of oil dries up. Let me tell you the answer. I DON"T CARE! we will have no use for THEM any more. We can keep ourselves safe from them by simple keeping them out. There really will be no reason not to treat them the way we have treated Cuba for the past 50 years, total embargo.
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Your pot plants also need nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium. Unless you take measures to add those things (and a few more), they'll slowly deplete the soil and die.
Absolutely. The middle east is well known for being short on both sunlight and investment capital, so will definitely have serious problems producing large quantities of biofuels.
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So you're saying that we should hold back progress because some people in the middle east might become terrorists if we don't?
I'm not saying that at all. Overall, it would be a good thing. Right now, we're effectively subsidizing these governments because we can't or won't reduce our dependence on oil, which they have, and we need. Right now we go to them, largely on their terms, or they threaten to shut off the spigot (a largely empty threat, as it is also self-destructive to them). A change to energy-self sufficiency would mean that we would stop subsidizing their governments. All I'm saying is that we'd have to consider the effect on that region, and telling them to "go pound sand" would probably not be in our best interests.
A technology like this would give us the opportunity to give aid on our terms, not theirs. Much as we do today, to Yemen.
. The other good thing is that this should act to stabilize energy prices. The United States is in for a shock in the next few years as the global economy rebounds, and the chinese and indians continue to buy a million or more cars a year. This would help soften the blow of all that additional demand coming into a limited supply market. Right now, we are, IMHO, on track to $5 or $6 / gallon gas in the next 5 years.
On a related note, I think the idea of adding additional domestic production in the short term is a mistake. I'd rather send $80 per barrel to the middle east now, than $400 a barrel a generation or three from now. Leave ours in the ground, then get it out when other world supplies run out. Then our children will be in the position OPEC enjoys now.
World crude oil consumption = 86,000,000 Barrels/day = 31,390,000,000 Barrels/year
divided by 800 Barrels / Acre = 39,237,500 Acres
= 157,788 square kilometres
= 1/4 the size of Texas
= 29,274,211 American Football Fields
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
It's not bullshit, it's science.
You forgot the dammit, dammit!
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
Yeah, but not necessarily enough to qualify as "feedstock". E.g., compare the bulk sugar feedstock required to power small children compared to the trace elements in the Wonder bread and Flintstones vitamins which supply them with all other nutritional requirements.
Plus, the bacterial soup may be pretty good at recycling that stuff in a closed system.
The middle east is not an island, and neither are we. Yes, Saudi Arabia might fall, become extremeist, and topple Kuait, Egypt, northeastern african states etc. We could live with that, from a global power/ economic standpoint. But as the chaos moved north and west, eventually it would get to places we have traditionally cared about.
Putting all your eggs in one basket:
efficient when it works,
disastrous when it doesn't.
The point is it's carbon neutral. All the CO2 that is "pumped into the air" came from the air in the first place and was not previously sequestered underground. It doesn't build us a ladder to climb out of the hole, but it could prevent us from digging deeper as long as it doesn't require more than atmospheric level of concentrations to perform.
A 50 fold improvement in efficiency is less extraordinary than you think; bioethanol, which I assume is what they're comparing to, is very inefficient. Crop plants typically store on the order of 1% of the sunlight they absorb as chemical energy, with the rest being wasted or used to maintain the plant. Most of that stored energy is in stems, roots, leaves, and other parts of the plant that aren't used for ethanol production, with only a small fraction winding up in the seeds that are used. (This is why celulosic ethanol has been such a big target; it would massively increase the fraction of the plant that's usable for fuel production.) Finally, the conversion from starch to fuel isn't very efficient, either. There's enough room for efficiency gains that a 50 fold improvement seems perfectly possible.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
enforced by religious leaders that don't follow the religion. Most of the Middle East, Saudi Arabia in particular, have a minuscule number of ultra wealthy Sheiks, a tiny middle class that serves them, and a huge number of ultra-poor kept that way by a constant state of terror and total control of the media on the part of the Sheiks.
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And you think that's good???
It *might* be necessary, as a measure of self defense. I doubt it. The Cuba policy has been a mistake for decades, if it was ever reasonable. Which I also doubt. We act so often to drive small countries that would prefer to be on friendly terms with us into the hands of our enemies that I tend to think it's a deliberate policy. A badly self-destructive one, but one that encourages lots of small wars where munitions are sold by certain companies to both sides. And where presidents can look like military leaders at minimal risk. So it's got benefits for a few parties, but for the country it's a net loss. It's not only unnecessarily expensive, it turns potential allies into enemies.
And, yes, once they're enemies, we need to defend against them. And so big defense budgets get passed. (Frequently lots bigger than the military itself requested.) And certain companies bid on those contracts and gain more wealth.
N.B.: When I said "certain companies" I meant companies that operate in fields producing certain materials. It isn't the same companies in all occasions. Don't think so much of a weapons cartel, as of a large group of companies operating in a certain area who each have the potential to earn lots of easy money if they win the bid. Even without an agreement they have common interests.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
It would mean that the West had fewer reasons to subsidize dictatorships or topple budding democracies in the Middle East or South America. Sounds like a win-win situation to me, except for the Saudi royal family of course.
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You're worried that Saudi Arabia BECOMES extremist?
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Hey stupid, the people creating this technology would never have bothered if they thought the earth's natural reserves were going to last forever, i.e. they're aware of peak oil too, and are investing to get around it.
This is the exact same figure that has been quoted for over 10 years so there have been no or little advancement in the process. They have engineered new bacteria which is a good thing. Main thing to note in the article is that their system needs "waste c02 input" so it has to be attached to some kinda power plant, and cannot be scaled up to use all across the midwest in farmland now currently used to grow ethanol without install c02 pipelines as well.
I think the oil companies would be happy that a) they wouldn't have to deal with despots/hostile governments/pirates (of the oil tanker variety) b) spending billions of dollars drilling holes in the ground that may or may not strike oil c) the liabilities of tanker/rig spills d) the volatility of oil prices.
a lot of people make a lot of money from the volatility of oil prices
it is an inelastic commodity, in the oil shocks of the 70s, the price of oil had to rise 400% before demand started to drop
Where is your peak oil now, bitches?! This is why I'm essentially a cornucopian. Never, ever underestimate the capacity of billions of minds to find some way of doing the previously impossible.
No worries, there's always going to be peak solar.
Of course it'll be a year or two before we've built the Dyson sphere, but after the last square degree of our Sun has been covered, energy prices are going to skyrocket!
We also have College degrees, which tell us that we SHOULD take it seriously :P
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True.
However, very small amounts of those elements are required per bacteria. While that certainly can add up over time, it shouldn't be outside of our capabilities to provide them in industrial quantities.
Secondly, the other elements are not removed from the system when the fuel is skimmed off. Ethanol is C2H6O. The only thing that happens is when the bacteria die, those other elements involved need to be recovered for the use of its descendant generations. Much of it will decompose back into the "soil". The only danger is that some of those elements will be locked into stable compounds that end up as waste products and be unavailable for use without further processing. I have no data on that, but one can safely assume that the very fact that life has been going on for billions of years now shows that it is unlikely to be a major threat to the system.
We've heard stuff like this so many times in so many different forms - so please forgive me for being skeptical about this. Wake me up when a plant is operational.
Great...so now there'll be lots of cheap fuel to power my Voller flying car and my jetpack that I use to go to work every day! Not to mention the cheap electricity that won't make me give up my Phantom game console...
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So we can continue to pollution the atmosphere for more decades like business-as-usual is sustainable?
At best, this would bring about a gradual change. In order to displace current US imports, at 800 bbl/ac, they would need about 4,411,000 ac (assuming I've not made a mistake) to fully displace US oil imports. Of course, the US is not the only importer of oil, either, so displacing all of that, while energy demand is only forecast to increase, won't be fast or cheap. Securing 4,411,000 acres will take quite some time, if we're not to displace food crops.
$20/bbl is optimistic. Even the $60/bbl that you mention might be optimistic. The article quotes $30/bbl as the energy cost, and I'm willing to bet that it doesn't include things like land acquisition, labor, distribution, et c. As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, competing with food crops could also be a problem. (Probably not much of a problem, though. The US had 922,095,840 ac in use as farmland as of 2007, according to the USDA.)
The energy density of gasoline is about 37 kWh / US gallon.
A barrel of oil is 42 gallons.
An acre is roughly 4000 m^2.
A year contains roughly 8750 hours.
25000 barrels of oil per acre per year therefore means roughly 1100 W/m^2, averaged over the whole year - day and night.
Solar irradiation gives about 1400 W/m^2 of energy when it is straight overhead.
Who wants to guess whether they're going to achieve the 25000 barrels / acre / year?
Hmmm
800 barrels of Crude per acre, at least according to the summary. 25,000 gallons of ethanol...
Now we just need a bacterial fuel additive to eliminate CO2 emissions :)
There is already a biological solution for removing CO2 from the atmosphere. They are called plants.
Reducing emissions and alternate sources of energy are fine but they are only *part* of a potential solution. More plants is another *part*. If we ignore the plants side of the solution we are going to require more draconian measures on the other side and this will just increase resistance and impede progress.
Energy in a barrel of oil ~ 1.7MWh
Energy per sq. m bright sunlight - 1kW/m^2
10 m^2 x 10h = 10kWh (about 30x30')
1700kWh per barrel / 10kWh/day = ~170 days.
Assuming 100% conversion. 30-40% is probably wildly optimistic.
Here's to burning coal and building nuclear reactors. :)
..don't panic
I much prefer, "Science, it works bitches"
http://www.xkcd.com/54/
Sounds great, but doesn't really address the problem of internal combustion engines having only 30% efficiency. Why jump through all those hoops if we could gather electricity with photovoltaic panels and then use much more efficient electrical engines? Does anyone here know how much energy that'd generate per acre versus the bacteria? I mean as long as we're looking for long-term solutions, why not focus on better plans? We're only short of light, infinitely rechargeable batteries or power lines along the roads by now.
You are sort of answering your own question. The "hoops" for bacteria generated fuel are smaller and fewer than the "hoops" for creating an entirely new infrastructure. In addition to the improvements in battery technology and massive new power generation and transmission requirements that you allude to there is also the environmental effects of the mining and transportation of the resources (ex lithium) necessary for all those new batteries and the recycling and waste handling of all the batteries that will be periodically replaced. In contrast the bacteria produced fuels use the existing tech and infrastructure and replace a dirty source with a possibly clean source.
The bacteria produced fuel seems to be a *clean* fuel unlike fuel distilled from petroleum. The CO2 from petroleum is CO2 sequestered by ancient forests and is being reintroduced to the atmosphere, increasing the C02 content of the atmosphere. The company describes their process as "artificial photosynthesis". If so then the CO2 from bacteria produced fuel is coming from the atmosphere. When burned its returning the CO2 it removed so there is no overall increase. Much as rain does not add to the ocean since the water was evaporated from the ocean in the first place.
This reminds me of the joke "security is easy, it's granting access that's the hard part". Where did I read that? Can't find it right now.
In the endeavour of genetically modified organisms, no investors equals no containment. But that's what you mean, right? You're concerned they're just gonna release these pipettes into the wild without seeking proper entrepreneurial safeguards.
Huzzah! Perpetual Motion At Last!
Actually its not perpetual motion since the sun is constantly introducing energy and power the process.
And news of an amazing new breakthrough? Something tells me an IPO in on the way, followed by massive disillusionment. Investors, guard your wallets. As for the bacteria, I'll believe it when I see the data.
We can buy food from other countries. Display the food crops.
Lets see. There are 4046.8726 square meters in an acre.
Since we know the MAXIMUM solar energy is about 1 kilowatt per square meter and the ratio of the surface area of a disc verses a sphere is 1:4 we get 250 watts per square meter average over a day. We also have an idea of how many hours in a year which most would agree is 24*365 = 8760
So at MOST the energy falling on an acre is 4046 * 250 * 8760 (watt.hours) = 8,860,740 kilowatt.hours (note the units conversion from watt.hours to kilowatt.hours).
Gasoline has about 34.8 MJ per liter. There are 3.78 liters/ US.gallon so 34.8 * 3.78 / 3600 / 1000 = 36.54 kilowatt.hours per us.gallon.
But they claim they can get 10,000 us.gallons of gas per acre so this is 36.54E5 = 3,654,000 kilowatt.hours of product with an energy input of 8,860,740 kilowatt.hours max. This is better than 41%.
BUT! For about 1/2 the year it might be below freezing!
Now does anyone want to calculate the total land area on earth and translate this into barrels of oil equivalent per year? The world currently uses about 86 million barrels per day.
On a related note, I think the idea of adding additional domestic production in the short term is a mistake. I'd rather send $80 per barrel to the middle east now, than $400 a barrel a generation or three from now. Leave ours in the ground, then get it out when other world supplies run out. Then our children will be in the position OPEC enjoys now.
Sadly, this will never happen. Our (and most others? all?) are terminally shortsighted :/
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
No, I think he's more worried about those various states (like Israel) that we have treaties or other obligations to. They get steamrolled, and we have to get involved. If we don't, we lose what little credibility remains and shove trust further into the closet.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Maybe. In principal I agree, but I don't want to see the US in the same spot over food in 30 years that we've been in with oil for 40. There's value in having some level of independence of production of food stuffs in all markets. Suppose Brazil became hostile to the US? It could take several years to have kiwi again. :) (Of course, if we hadn't invested so damn much in securing supplies of oil, we probably wouldn't be in such a spot.)
From their best case scenario, they can produce 25000 gallons per acre per year, which is 800 barrels a year. Current world oil consumption ~80,000,000 bbl/day * 365 = 29.2 billion barrels per year. 29.2 billion bbl per year / 800 bbl per acre per year = 36.5 million acres of this biofuel to fulfill the world's needs. 36.5 million acres / 640 acres per square mile = 57031 square miles. 57031 square miles is roughly the size of Iowa. US oil consumption is roughly 20,000,000 bbl/day, so that would be 14257 square miles set aside. Much more realistic - this is close to the area of Maryland. If oil gets super expensive again (>$120/bbl) and stays there, this could definitely become a reality.
Where is your {flying car, mach 1+ commercial airliner, 12GHz processor...} now, bitches?! This is why understanding physics is important. While a few thousand minds on the far right of the bell curve have potential to find ways to do things that haven't been done yet, never, ever underestimate the ability of physics to constrain the solution.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
If you read Noam Chomsky, you get the impression that our embargo on Cuba has been extraordinarily cruel.
except at night when most of those plants *produce* CO2 to respire just like everything else.
Only plants which tie the CO2 up in wood or which get burried and turned into oil take more out of the atmostphere than they put back.
So just "plants" isn't good enough.
it has to be the right plants.
And burning their wood/products afterwards leaves you back at zero whatever they are.
Unless they're really, really stupid, they'll see this coming and will still have a lot of the oil money that the world have gifted them with for decades. Since they'll still have plenty of oil, they can use it themselves - petroleum is good for lots of things other than burning. Also, they can find other things to do - they weren't always oil sheiks; maybe sell some of those gold-plated urinals and limos made from sterling silver, if things get tight. Apart from that, well, I find myself not giving a damn
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Yes, that sounds about right.
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Securing 4,411,000 acres will take quite some time, if we're not to displace food crops.
Meh. Kentucky is, what, about 25 million acres? I've never seen anything good come out of that state. You go warm up the bulldozer, I'll go round up some oil execs.
If I did my math right, 10,000 gallons of gasoline is approximatley 360,000 kWh. Each acre is ~4046 square meters so the incident solar energy is approximately 2023 kW assuming approximately 500 W/m2. Assuming 12 hours of light a day results in 8,860,740 kWh of incident solar energy. Taking the 29% efficiency number from wikipedia yields a final total of 2,569,600. So a first order estimate says the bacteria will yield 360 MWh versus 2,569 MWh for solar. I'm sure there are other considerations I left out including how much it would cost both in energy and dollars to create a one acre field of each, but I was curious how the numbers compared as well.
Only plants which tie the CO2 up in wood or which get burried and turned into oil take more out of the atmostphere than they put back.
Ok... if these plants (cyanobacteria) produce hydrocarbons, when they photosynthesize, which contain carbon, then where does the CO2 they respire come from?
Perhaps if they produced an excess of oil, and pumped it back into the earth for safe keeping, there would be a net reduction of atmospheric CO2.
except at night when most of those plants *produce* CO2 to respire just like everything else.
While growing its still a net CO2 sequestration. Sort of on topic but also interesting:
"A new NASA computer modeling effort has found that additional growth of plants and trees in a world with doubled atmospheric carbon dioxide levels would create a new negative feedback – a cooling effect – in the Earth's climate system that could work to reduce future global warming."
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/cooling-plant-growth.html
Only plants which tie the CO2 up in wood or which get burried and turned into oil take more out of the atmostphere than they put back.
I believe plants have some direct uses beyond wood and there is also the potential for things like plastic precursors (eliminating another need for petroleum).
"Now, in a first step toward achieving industrial-scale green production, scientists from the U.S. Department of Energys (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and collaborators at Dow AgroSciences report engineering a plant that produces industrially relevant levels of compounds that could potentially be used to make plastics."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101108140638.htm
So just "plants" isn't good enough. it has to be the right plants.
In general I think it is plants that are in a growth phase, not necessarily particular species.
The hard part is surviving lawsuits from DeBeers.
Just looking at two of the high figures, Yuma AZ has 242 clear days a year, and Las Vegas NV has 210/year. Note that the amount of energy available does not drop to zero on partly or even fully cloudy days, it is just reduced. Some energy may have to be expended to keep the biomass in the collectors from getting too cold at night, but this is not likely to be a huge amount.
These areas in the southwest are not agricultural areas, so we are not talking about replacing current cropland with solar facilities. There is a different problem here: where does the CO2 and water come from? This is the question no matter where the solar farm is located. In existing agricultural areas water can come from the same source as water for crops, but the C02 still has to come from somewhere.
If the CO2 is from existing fossil fuel plants then we would want to locate close to existing generating plants, which might not have the best amount of daylight. Still, extracting more energy from burning fossil fuel before it is released into the atmosphere is good with respect to global warming.
The real win would be to recycle CO2 from the atmosphere, which would render the process carbon neutral. If this could also be done with photosynthesis it could be a huge win, and then the farms could be anywhere there is sun and water. Note the claim that the water can be brackish or even salt water, so it could be done in coastal areas all over the world. With crude oil over $90 a barrel on a routine basis, this could be half as efficient as the claims and still be competitive.
Why is Snark Required?
What about the children? Won't somebody please think of the children!?
Jesus loves me, he loves me a bunch, because he always puts Jiffy in my lunch.
. . .I'll go round up some oil execs.
Seed money, or fertilizer?
Sugar + anaerobic respiration = Ethanol
Thank Science for this creation!
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
I do have my doubt about these guys; they certainly do reek strongly of pump-n-dump (extraordinary claims, no patents, no papers... but the article never stated they were using chlorophyll. While I'm not a biologist, I can imagine the existence of a atmospheric carbon-fixing biological process that does not utilize chlorophyll.
I would also suggest factoring in the storage and distribution of the product, etc into this argument because cost functions always play a role in optimization of resource production (in this case a source energy capable of being used anywhere on Earth and at many scales, i.e. motorcycle to an airplane to a power plant). Not saying your argument is unsound, but its not complete either.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
That's what they mean by micropayments!
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
You also can't feel a promised oil famine.
Put the bong down.
We're going to find out when the oil runs out, so the only question is when and how. And yes the bad men would still find bullets, but they'd not have us in their back yards as targets. In the absence of foreigners the arabs have traditionally turned their guns on each other, not gone looking for us. Also they -won't- have a much larger base of disenfranchised/angry people to recruit from because their population will collapse without the oil money. Immigration or death will drag the middle east population back down to a fraction of current levels.
If you eliminate agriculture subsidies I expect farmers will find plenty of arable land for a paying crop like this. The USA is a rich nation, there's no reason they can't buy food from the third world. It would certainly reduce poverty and war if they did, as well as keeping american sons out of cemeteries.
So? How is that our problem? It's certainly not our fault that their governments chose to waste their country's incredible natural wealth and squander it on funding terrorists and enriching themselves with gigantic yachts instead of building a diversified economy and modernizing their societies. (For an example of how much is squandered, Saudi Arabia spends double digits of its GDP as a personal spending account for their royal family alone).
Maybe after we've left the Middle East to their own devices and withdrawn our military due to have nothing worthwhile to fight for, the man on the street in the those Middle Eastern countries will see their countries plight was not the fault of the western countries and instead direct their anger at the corrupt rulers responsible. It's not that far-fetched, just look at Tunisia.
If they were smart, and since they have the pleasure of good sun for nearly 365 days a year, they would be the first to build these reactors and then export the product.
JC Venter & Exxon Mobil are ahead of the game right now with fuel secreting algae.... 2010 was the test year, I believe they start rolling out more plants between now and 2012. (source lacking for lack of effort, this is from memory of past slashdot discourse and physorg posts)
when the some time passes and the knowledge becomes more commonplace, will bioengineering prove to be, intellectually, roughly as hard to implement as, say, c++ coding? is it just that it's new, and producing amazing results right now, like 'on demand' petrochemicals from 'libraries' of engineered organisms? will we hit the day when genome hacking is farmed out to India, for $12 an hour, becoming as mundane as, um, i am?
There was a video game about this, as well...
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
This should be implemented around coal power plants, pipe the CO2 rich exaust right into the pond with the bacteria.
Assuming those bacteria work in a fluid.
And in equatorial and tropical areas, since sunlight is an essential component to this.
There might be an issue with pH, CO2 when pumped into a liquid creates carbonic acid, so it might be necessary to regulate CO2 injection into the fluid with the bacteria.
Very interesting.
Hopefully there no huge hidden catch, beyond the obvious patent licensing that will have to be paid for the next 20 years.
And there's always the question of what those bacteria will cause if they leak into a river or the seas.
This might make electric and fuel cell cars much less appealing.
I'm an easy-going guy; I'll let them pick between the two.
Here you go:
Methods and compositions for the recombinant biosynthesis of n-alkanes
Because 5 minutes of Googling is apparently too much to ask of the average journalist...
If the claims are true, I REALLY hope we never get a spill of the bacteria that makes the oil :)
Clearly you know too much. Good thing you posted as AC. Hopefully that will make it harder for the lizard people to track you down.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Sure they would. They'd buy this technology and still sell the product to you at $100/barrel. They'd probably keep pretending to be environmentally damaging with a war or two thrown in for good measure just to keep the illusion... :)
Just human fetal stem cells suspended in an aqueous solution of war-orphan's tears and finely shredded mortgage backed securities.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Has been relevant only since the discovery of oil. Saudi Arabia has passed peak oil, and so has passed peak relevancy. When they can no longer afford the pyramid scheme that is their economy, their state will collapse back on itself instantly.
Remember that the House of Saud has been promising it's people that Trickle Down Economics will pay off for the little guy for like 50 years. Just another year or two and everybody in the country will be rich etc. We know how exactly what trickles down in that scheme.
Right now the extremists can afford to look abroad and say our presence in their lives is the root of their problems. In thirty years or so we will stop having any presence in their lives. Between now and then, they will continue to try to make us go away, and we will have to play along with their various national agendas. But we are their Jews as much as the actual Jews are their Jews. We are someone to blame for how the dream of oil has not made daily life better. We also back Israel because it is the only actually stable state in the region. We will need some sort of foot-hold from which to deal with that mess when the oil runs out. For a brief period of time there will be a lot of arms and a lot of angry people. Those two will cancel each other out left to their own.
The only reason the west supports the House of Saud is because they can keep the country together and functioning well enough to keep the oil flowing. The reason the individual members of the House of Saud invest outside their own country so heavily is because some of them are not so dumb.
But really, once the sand and oil cocktail is just sand again, and now that we no longer really have to worry about the mid-east waterways for the well-being of Europe, the whole area is a write-off. Nobody needs that sand.
Were the House of Saud actually smart in the general sense they would have modernized their country and they would already be establishing solar and bio-fuel infrastructure. Even if the technology _sucks_ relatively, they own a huge expanse of unoccupied dry land under cloudless sky at or near the equator. Sure-as-shootin someone will solve the solar-to-storage problem sooner or later. Then Saud could be selling us its sunlight energy.
But they'll collapse first, into a nice and irrelevant pile of sand and dust.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Most of the oil in the Middle East is controlled by a tiny, tiny number of ultra wealthy families. There is horrible inequality there and the oil industry has held back modernization of the countries' economies for decades. Their societies crashing is the inevitable result of rampant inequality and corruption. So far they've avoided it by subsidizing everyone else with super generous social programs and ultra cheap oil. That can't last forever.
If the goal is to undercut the cartel to get the price of oil as a basic commodity down, is letting China have them such a bad idea?
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
How exactly is a Saudi Arabia with no money from oil and no subsidies/military aid from the US supposed to steamroll anyone?
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Why isn't it a common practice to add charcoal to the soil?
I've read from several sources that it is both a great way to help create top soil and it improves existing top soil.
Plus, it's carbon that will never make it back into the atmosphere unless something causes it to burn.
*sigh* back to work...
Exactly. What happens when these cyanobacteria get free? Will they cover the entire world's oceans with an oil slick? Would that interfere with the water cycle and potentially end all life as we know it? Or would it just radically alter the ocean's ecosystem as oil-consuming bacteria rise to prominence to break down the new food supply?
It looks like you ran your calculation with UK barrels. Honestly, I had no idea there was a difference until I checked this out.
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=one+year+of+crude+oil+consumption+by+one+acre+per+eight-hundred+barrels
You can calculate against the size of Texas (land area of texas), but it doesn't seem to know the size of an American football field.
The flashpoint doesn't have to involve us. Just like it didn't in WWI and WWII. AFAIK Russia was also not initially involved either (in WWII at least. I admit I don't know much about WWI)
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
The mileage issue is more a customer expectation issue. We expect cars to have a range of 400-500 km.
Ultimately if you have a charge station in your garage or driveway at home, unless you work in the delivery business I doubt that you drive more than 200 km (120 miles) per day on a regular basis.
Similarly the recharge time is a planning issue. If you remember to plug in your car overnight you have at least a 6 hour window every day where you don't use your car where it can charge.
This doesn't solve the weekend road trip issue or the "I forgot to plug it in" issue.
The vehicle that becomes most interesting for regular use both in terms of environment and practical use is a plug in hybrid. The hybrid needs to have a large enough battery bank to cover the normal day to day commute (say 100 miles), and then have a small gasoline generator to provide power and extend mileage for weekend road trips (and those days when you cant plug in or forget to plug in) to bump the range up to a range comparable with a regular gasoline car.
The main issue is the cost / impact of batteries. If batteries are produced in larger quantities the cost will come down considerably, and if stringent recycling laws and facilities are in place to recycle the old batteries into new ones then the battery problem becomes manageable as well. A good example of this already exists with regular automotive batteries which have a recycling stream already set up.
The main issue is the up front cost of the vehicle being much higher than a regular gasoline car at this point.
----- "Profanity is the one language that all programmers understand."
You aren't reading what I wrote. Saudi Arabia would not be able to conquer anyone if they weren't propped up by US "aid" and the oil money. If that dries up, the regime will collapse and the military will be powerless.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Yeah, you can produce hydrocarbons using H2O, CO2 and photosynthesizing organisms. But those organisms do need other nutrients, so the "no feedstock" bit can't be true.
I believe they call it "no feedstock" because those materials aren't used in the fuel you extract - unlike other bacteria who use the hydrocarbons from a feedstock to produce the fuel.
Maybe. In principal I agree, but I don't want to see the US in the same spot over food in 30 years that we've been in with oil for 40. There's value in having some level of independence of production of food stuffs in all markets. Suppose Brazil became hostile to the US? It could take several years to have kiwi again. :) (Of course, if we hadn't invested so damn much in securing supplies of oil, we probably wouldn't be in such a spot.)
There is no independence. You know the foreigners will just buy the American food companies and take it take that. The only way to have independence is to have small family owned farms across the USA.
So, you mean that there's nobody who would get pissed off over it (or just see a use for it) and push the ball down the hill?
The region already isn't very stable. Shake it up a bit and we may not like what falls out of the tree. That's all I'm saying.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
I'd like to see these alternative fuels tomorrow rather than next week or next century, so rather than pass more bills, I'd like the government, whether it's the US Congress or the British House of Lords, get their noses out of the private sector and worry about what food to serve up in their respective cafeterias. The only time "governments" make technology move faster is when there's a war to fight, and suffice it to say, we don't need any more of those going on right now.