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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."
*rubs palms greedily*
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.
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.
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.
The bacteria work for free, right?
They do now, but pretty soon they'll unionise...
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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