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Researchers Develop Biofuel Alternative To Ethanol
coondoggie writes "Researchers say they have developed a method of using bacteria to convert decaying grass directly into isobutanol, which can be burned in regular car engines with a heat value higher than ethanol but similar to gasoline. The research could mean great savings in processing costs and time, plus isobutanol is a higher grade of alcohol than ethanol, according to the Department of Energy's BioEnergy Science Center (BESC) and its Oak Ridge National Laboratory"
Yes, isobutanol provides many benefits over ethanol and petrol, but there's bound to be an IP issue pretty much any time these days, as Gevo is currently finding out. Of course at a time when solutions are needed fast.
Perhaps (un)surprisingly BP is the plaintiff here...
http://corporate.lexisnexis.com/news/corporate-counsel,intellectual-property/cat200003_doc1373404955.html
The VW TDI cars are excellent cars, but Diesel is now so expensive that despite their phenomenal mileage they're still not economical. I now pay at least $0.20 more per gallon than premium unleaded around here.
E pluribus unum
grassoline sounds pretty snappy
Apparently it's already in your grass clipplings, so all you need to do is;
1 separate out the C. cellulolyticum H10
2 culture and grow an inoculating culture
3 sterilize you grass clippling
4 inoculate with you C. cellulyticum and ferment
5 profit
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
You won't ever buy it. The companies refining the oil will. It will be blended with gasoline like MTB and ethanol to meet legislated requirements for oxygen in the gasoline. There is a bunch of reasons the oxygen is needed. Google them if you really need to know. Hopefully it means a price reduction at the pumps eventually if is actually cheaper in the end. Or at least the gas will go farther from a higher energy content.
Whereas right now, corn productions is managed efficiently, and the starving people all get food... right.
Starvation is mostly a logistics and political problem. Low-grade corn is cheap near where it's produced, but that's generally not where people are starving. Moving the food to the people costs money, which raises the final cost beyond what the people can afford. A government could subsidize that cost, but that kind of action is often systematically abused and easily spun by political opponents as "propping up those greedy transport companies".
Basic economic analysis tells us that with starving people needing food, but only being able to pay a lower amount for it, a smart distribution company will simply ignore those people in favor of markets that will turn a profit. The simplest solution is to make starving areas profitable, either with a subsidy or by lowering the cost of transport.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
If this grass or process can benefit from using arable land and irrigation, then please no.
The biofuel thing has always mystified me. If there are two things in the world that are more scarce and fundamental to life than oil, they've got to be arable land and irrigation water. The corn ethanol thing caused all sorts of havoc in farming and food pricing, particularly with international farmers destroying staple food crops to grow fuel plants and selling corn to oil producers instead of families. This is not the way of the future.
If this grass can grow in otherwise unusable land, and it can grow without diverting otherwise useful drinking or irrigation water, then fine. I'm very skeptical that even if that is technically possible that it will play out as such once the prices come in and farmers have to choose between taking money from poor hungry people or rich gas guzzlers.
Can we just abstract the whole fuel source thing and skip to all-electrics like the Tesla and power them with... nuclear? solar? hydroelectric? wind? geothermal? hamsters?
Cheers
Isobutanol is not very soluble in water (87 g/L) - I wonder if this process also avoids the need for distillation? Distillation is the most energy-intensive part of bio-ethanol production.
If it doesn't separate, distillation will really suck, since it's boiling point (107.89 C) is higher than water.
Corn does make livestock sick. If you feed a cow nothing but corn, they get overgrowths of bacteria in their rumen, produce excessive gas, and can suffer from stomach and intestinal ruptures. This is a large part of the reason why 80% of antibiotics used in the USA are fed to farm animals as prophylaxis, in an attempt to prevent stomach ruptures and feedlot deaths. You're correct, though, that the sick livestock cost ranchers. They just don't see any (fast, easy) way out of the feedlot model. The feedlot cows are ALL sick, but just healthy enough to walk from truck to slaughterhouse. That's close to all the USDA requires.
Uh, "if it looks roughly mouse-shaped according to my infra-red sensitive pit, eat it"? --Chris Burke 09-08-10