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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.
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.
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
...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..
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
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.
On the other hand, if we could just convert kudzu to oil they'd be all set right now.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
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
Well... yes, except that carbon being released into the atmosphere is the same quantity of carbon that was taken out of the atmosphere to produce the fuel in the first place. Arguably, chemically produced petroleum would have fewer contaminants and byproducts than ground oil derived petrol, and would burn cleaner. If you had to worry about polution, it would be in the form of waste heat.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
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They're looking for investors, right?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Are you kidding? Something which means they can carry on their business indefinitely but without the hassle of having to deal with Chavez and Putin? If I ran an oil company I would be breaking out the Cuban cigars and ordering a bunch of sexually liberated virgins right now.
[FUCK BETA]
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?
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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?
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.
Read the article this process uses C02 as an input. If you burn say ethanol ( a possible output of this ) you get C02+H2O there are no pollutants there. Neither is toxic and it can be argued we need more fresh water. C02 is only a problem if you don't like larger fruits and vegetables or are concerned that we might be pushing the atmospheric concentration to a point where it *could* cause climate change or something. In that case you should still like this technology because the easiest place to get large amounts of C02 is going to be from the air.
So if you produce ethanol this way put it in your tank and drive you car down the street with it you have been entirely carbon neutral. The worst thing you have done is released that dangerous solvent we call water.
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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.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
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?
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.
How exactly would there be waste heat? The process magically circumvents the laws of energy preservation? No, the energy stored in the fuel is the energy taken from sunlight, just like the CO2 stored in it is the one taken from the atmosphere. The whole process is just a way to store solar energy in high concentration and have it usable at a convenient time.
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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You're worried that Saudi Arabia BECOMES extremist?
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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.)
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.
Whatever you think of global warming, pollution is nasty, and giving us such delightful things as asthma.
Most "pollution" today (excepting CO2) is emphatically not from modern cars. The air in most major cities is dirtier than the exhaust from a modern car with modern emissions controls.
Today's pollution comes from coal plants built a half century ago, virtually unregulated marine diesel engines in harbors, petrochemical industry plants, etc. It's not cars. And if we would shut down or retrofit the old plants and prohibit highly sulfur-contaminated fuels, most of it would go away.
Of course, that would slightly raise energy costs, so why bother?
Whatever you think of global warming, pollution is nasty, and giving us such delightful things as asthma.
Ok... well.. mining operations aren't too environmentally friendly either. Something interesting about this bacteria... consider, cyanobacteria produces its energy through photosynthesis.
That means, if this bacteria is used over massive acres to produce oil, using sunlight and air, it will fix CO2, releasing O2 and the hydrocarbons.
This is overall more favorable for the environment than extracting from the ground and burning it, because extracting from the ground and burning it results in a net release of CO2.
But if the petro is produced by cyanobacteria, some CO2 molecules had to be fixed for every hydrocarbon molecules released, so this could actually be beneficial (even if there is still some pollution).
Of course, that would slightly raise energy costs, so why bother?
I hate us.
which is totally what she said
Cyanobacteria use phycocyanin for photosynthesis, as an accessory pigment to chlorophyll. A number of pigments can serve accessory to chlorophyll, and there are several types of chlorophyll. Larger multicellular organisms such as trees other macroscopic plants can use a number of these pigments together to capture a broader range of the EM spectrum and therefore more energy from sunlight. Cyanobacteria use only a narrow range of the EM spectrum for photosynthesis because they use only a narrow range of pigments. I was given the benefit of the doubt in my calculation of the best-case scenario, but logically the energy efficiency therefore must be FAR below the photosynthetic limit of ~14%, which makes this company's claims thermodynamically impossible and patently absurd. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthesis#Efficiency http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanobacteria http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phycocyanin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessory_pigment
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You also can't feel a promised oil famine.
Just human fetal stem cells suspended in an aqueous solution of war-orphan's tears and finely shredded mortgage backed securities.
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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.