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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."
And invest 50 billion dollars into emerging technologies.
The CO2 released by burning this fuel would be CO2 that was taken from the atmosphere not from a hydrocarbon source that was naturally sequestered in the earth. Basically, it's neutral. If the bacteria eats some sort of plant then the CO2 released would be the CO2 the plant took out of the atmosphere. Example, a plant eats 5 CO2 units (sort of like a girth unit to you Brian Regan fans) to grow, the bacteria eats it and turns it into fuel, when burnt it will release 5 CO2 units. Unless you think CO2 magically appears from somewhere else.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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It is not funny, since real liquid fossil fuels are created by archaea bacteria in the earth crust, with natural gas as input. This is well known, but it is a slow process. There is as much life in the upper 3 kilometers of crust as on top of the surface.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
They're looking for investors, right?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
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.
because photovoltaic are only 10% efficient?
while I agree electric motors would be far better for personal transports, the problem is storage. You can't store electricity in great enough quantities for it to work well. Until you can get 400 miles fully loaded with less than 1 hour recharge time, on electric motors, they will just not work in the USA. Right now the Tesla roadster has the best range of ~350 miles . driving 25mph with only one very light person on board with no baggage.
The USA doesn't have the bus, or train infrastructure to support moving lots of people well. Trains roughly take 2-3 times the time it takes a car to go the same distance.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
800 barrels per acre per year. Hmmm. US oil imports run 15 million barrels per day, or about 5.5 billion barrels per year. Assuming that the 800 barrels per acre per year is accurate (such estimates are generally a optimistic) replacement would require 6.8 million acres, or about 11,000 square miles. With water, of course -- maybe Louisiana and Mississippi have a future after all; that would be about 20% of the land area of either state.
Lets round that up to 50,000 square miles to account for support infrastructure. That's still not a bad investment for producing the fuel needed to power the USA. Additionally, consider the wealth redistribution from producing fuel domestically instead of importing it. Assuming the technology actually works and is sufficiently scalable, even the multi-decade build out required would be worthwhile.
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
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?
If you consider total consumption, not just imports, it would require around 15,000 square miles. However, the US has over half a million square miles of active cropland, and about 135,000 square miles just corn.
In other words, if you replaced ~3% of America's farming, or 12% of America's corn production with this type of hydrocarbon farming, you could replace all of America's oil consumption. Stick that in your corn pipe and smoke it, corn-based-ethanol producers.
Be smug when Middle Eastern oil is irrelevant to world prosperity, not now when the technology could well be snake oil.
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.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
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
The bacteria work for free, right?
They do now, but pretty soon they'll unionise...
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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.
Yes, this is the biggest problem in this area.
Saudi Arabia can still pump for under $20 per barrel.
Alternative technologies require a $90 price to get going.
Every time they get started, oil prices drop long enough to kill them.
Could be intentional-- could just be the way the cycles work.
But they need oil to be $90 a barrel for a dozen years, then the new stuff will have taken hold and start dropping in price. Then when oil drops, it won't be a no-brainer to just return to oil.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
ok something seems really really odd with this math.
reading the article I assumed the 800 barrels per acre wasn't running off incomming solar energy because the numbers seem crazy.
800 barrels per acre....
US consumption: 20680000 barrels per day....
20680000/800 =25850
25850 acres = 40.390625 square miles
Area needed for a years worth of americas consumption:14742 square miles
America, land area:3794101 square miles
So less than half a percent of the land area of the US would have to be covered for this.
Frankly this seems far too good to be true given how crap bioethanol et al have turned out to be in the past.
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).
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
A-Bomb