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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"
Warning: that link is goatse
Some grassoline that most of us can use. I've been intrigued by the biodiesel movement for some time now, but there are so few Diesel cars available for purchase in this country that it hasn't even been worth considering for me. If this will burn in a regular gas engine, though...
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
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
And it wasn't even a functioning goatse. Kids these days.
Program Intellivision!
There might have been one about fusion power, but there was one specifically about isobutanol.
Gevo has been developing their own fermentation technology for over 8 years, until a patent issued to a JV between BP and Dupont on Dec 2010 is suddenly seeing Gevo in court
If IP battles are going to go on in such a raging manner it will be decades before we (as consumers) see anything useful come out of these technologies.
And we all know where things are heading while we linger...
Aren't all shortlinks posted here?
grassoline sounds pretty snappy
are backing this process? Because they're going to be up against some huge opposition from the big agribusiness firms plus Big Oil.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
The real breakthrough we need isn't growing bacterial to produce fuel. We already know how to do that quite well. The trick is scaling it up to practical volumes. Generally speaking bacterial who waste energy on producing fuel for us humans tend to be pretty fragile and finicky.
Exactly... how does this stuff taste I wonder?
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. -HLM
Ethanol fuel in the US is a subsidy for corn growers, plain and simple. Any effect is has on the fuel supply is a distant afterthought. Therefore, any alternative to ethanol that isn't made from corn, corn, and only corn completely misses the point and won't get any national attention. I tell you, the first and most important step in balancing the US budget is to move the first few. most inluential, presidential primaries to states that don't grow corn!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
How about we call it food. Because that is what we are using to create this stuff. Sure, you can produce these things with waste, but corn is better and more efficient and hence much more profitable. As such, this will divert food from (literally) starving people to powering engines. Good luck identifying whether it is from corn or kelp. There is a perfectly good substitute for using food to create the fuel to power your car. It is called crude oil.
Cheers
JE
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
If the isobutanol is made from decaying grass then it's not food for humans.
Gives a whole new meaning to the "Gas, Ass or Grass" bumper stickers
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.
Actually corn sucks as a fuel FYI. Most other alternative fuels pack more punch per ounce including waste materials like methane. Unfortunately as Americans, corn is all we really have because that's one of the few the crops the government chose to subsidize starting back in 1929. We have so much corn that the government at times decided to purchase and burn tons of it just to keep prices inflated and protect farmers. But if you care to save our sacred crop that makes us fat, makes our livestock sick, and sucks as a fuel then more power to you.
I support growing more grass even if we use it as fuel.
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.
Well, it's a liquid, so physically of course you can drink it.
"We" aren't doing anything. I'm using my grass to create food, and fuel, and whatever else I need. You can use your grass however you want.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
If plants are eating grass then I think we should probably look into that problem instead.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
If I understand correctly, one of the major problem with ethanol from corn is that corn requires fertilizer, and fertilizer these days comes from natural gas. Or to put it another way, ethanol is a fossil fuel! One of the other problems with ethanol is that it takes land that could be used for growing food and converts it to land used for growing fuel.
How is this grass-based fuel any different? To make it in large quantities won't we still need fossil fuel based fertilizers and large tracts of land?
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
First butanol isn't particularly water soluble, 87 g/L at 20 C and its density is 0.802 g/cm3, so it floats on top of the water
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
This is a Government-funded paper, but it's behind a paywall. The price is $20.
There are lots of biotech schemes for digesting cellulose into something more useful, but so far, none of them are cheap enough.
Hold them all on the same day. Then you get it out of the way immediately without all the stupidity of a state with less than 1% of the population weeding out candidates before others get to vote on them. This makes it the perfect time to get in alternate voting methods as well to bring about a likelihood that someone will get a majority vote.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
If I remember correctly, a couple of the proposed crops for making cellulosic ethanol are switchgrass and miscathus, and they both grow fine without human intervention. Switchgrass is native to North America. My understanding is that either crop could be used on land that isn't actively being farmed for food crops or that is "resting" for a few years as part of a normal crop rotation cycle.
I knew I'd have a use for this darn inoculating culture and this darn grass clipping steriliser one day. Now I just need a C. cellulolyticum H10 separator. I wonder if Uncle Bob will lend me his... [rubs chin]
Soylent Green?
a handful of selfish greedy people are no match for millions of selfish, greedy people -u4ya
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.
That's why it's an advance if we can create it from cellulose. It's not like we couldn't synthesize isobutanol from plants before. Making fuel out of sugar is no big secret. What's new is that this time, it's from parts we can't eat. It's not perfect, but it's an advance.
The law of unintended consequences has proven many times that moving food to the starving tends to put the local farmers out of business creating the need to continue moving food. Why subsidize something to make it profitable? If there is not a natural profit in the venture, a government should do it directly thus saving taxpayers the "profit". Lowering the cost of transport does not fall under the term "simple solution". I'm not advocating letting people starve, but I don't know of any simple solutions that work though eliminating farm subsidies is a good start.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
Or, you know, build some modern nuclear power plants.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
Just wait till they make fuel from fermented human waste. Assoline will confuse matters even more.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Sorry, recombination happens all the time in bacteria. It's hardly news. At least, they were teaching us about it in introductory cell biology at Cambridge in 1969, and the textbook was already years old.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
LD50 for isobutanol is 2460 mg/kg.
The orally lethal dose in humans of pure ethylene glycol is approximately 1.4 mL/kg.
"Higher" alcohol usually means that it has more carbon atoms --- 4 in this case vs. 2 for ethanol.
I would say that isobutanol is a "better" alcohol for fueling cars than ethanol because it has a higher energy density, doesn't evaporate as much and doesn't suck water out of the air.
Engineering Corynebacterium glutamicum for isobutanol production
or pdf download:
doi:10.1007/s00253-010-2522-6
I know I will be grilled for writing this, but has it never occurred to you that it may not be such a good idea to send all that food to those starving people in the first place? The hunger in Africa and other places is, in my humble opinion, not caused by a shortage of food but by an overabundance of people (relative to the resources available there). Many African countries have annual population growth rates between 3 and 4%. Hell, even with the US population almost stagnating at less than 1% and European population in decline and China still enforcing its one-child policy the world population is still growing by about 1% p. a. No matter how much we restrict the use of food for energy production this is unsustainable.
I agree that agricultural land should not be used for energy, but that is not because of all the starving people far away but because we need that land to produce enough food for ourselves to reduce or eliminate our dependence on imports (which indeed often take away local resources from where they are needed most, though that consideration is rather secondary to me).
Oh, by the way, in case you missed the last 20 years of public debate: your crude oil will cease to be an option within my projected lifetime. You may want to come up with something else.
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
Lets get real here about this whole starving people issue.
If we are talking about starving people in this country they should migrate. If you are someplace were you can't provide for yourself in the states you should leave that place, even if you have to walk. Its entirely possible to do that here. I am not saying its at all easy for some, but I really do think if you starve to death in the USA its partially because you allowed it to happen. There are enough programs, shelters, odd jobs, etc around that its possible for anyone to live at least very poorly.
If we are talking about other places, we have to realize the powerful people their want it that way. When know when the price of bread gets to high you get revolts and revolutions, but there is a certain zone before that were the population spends most of its time trying to feed itself and not planning up risings. That is how folks like Gaddafi want to run or rather ruin their nations. Quite honestly it looks like the rebels are going to fail at this point without some outside help in the form of no-fly zone, and perhaps even some ground support. History has shown we can't give food away and get the results we want. It takes military intervention with also FREQUENTLY does not get the results we want. In that sense its not about passing out inexpensive often surplus grain but rather treasury busting military exercises, not to mention the cost to our families. Its not that I don't want to help the less fortunate but the truth is the price is often higher than even we here in America can really afford.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
I hear hemp is a very good biofuel crop, for all kinds of reasons. Fast growing, easy to process, not too fussy about where it's grown. Its reputation as a narcotic works against it, but the kind of hemp you'd grow for biofuel would be an extremely weak drug.
But by the same token, I'm never sure whether its proponents are just keen on it for druggy reasons.
you gotta be kiding me. what you are touting as the solution is actually a big part of the problem.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_subsidy
" Agricultural subsidies depress world prices and mean that unsubsidised developing-country farmers cannot compete; and the effects on poverty are particularly negative when subsidies are provided for crops that are also grown in developing countries since developing-country farmers must then compete directly with subsidised developed-country farmers, for example in cotton and sugar[28]. The IFPRI has estimated in 2003 that the impact of subsidies costs developing countries $24Bn in lost incomes going to agricultural and agro-industrial production; and more than $40Bn is displaced from net agricultural exports["
"The CAP-related agriculture and trade policies that lead to the overproduction and dumping of EU agricultural products are said to undermine the livelihoods of millions of farmers in developing countries...."
http://www.fao.org/ag/AGAInfo/programmes/en/pplpi/docarc/wp18.pdf
When is Grass Food? Think of all the grass waste that gets put into landfills. Maybe you could get something for this stuff now. Recycling center or home brew setups that you have to convert to fuel.
You are aware that petroleum consists of what we call gasoline and what, as far as I am aware, everyone calls diesel, plus a bunch of other distillation fractions, aren't you? That is where the name OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) comes from.
Actually, I just did a little research and discovered that "petrol" is not short for petroleum. It is actually short for St. Peter's oil and originated as the trade name for gasoline by the British wholesaler Carless, Capel and Leonard (their competitors referred to it as "motor spirit" until the 1930s, which certainly explains why "petrol" became the dominant term).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Biodiesel is essentially harvested solar energy, packaged in chemical form, with an efficiency that is probably comparable to solar panels. Worse, sunlight and resources devoted to growing grass is sunlight and resources not growing food. We can, and will, grow some of our fuel, but at nowhere near the scale, nor at the same energy return, as oil.
Biofuel is one answer, but it's a small one-word, vaguely apologetic answer lost in the din. You want to generate energy? Think "nuclear."
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
isobutanol from cellulose is not a tiny improvement over isobutanol from sugars. It is a huge one.
You do realize that cellulose is waste, while sugar is not only food but harder to produce in quantity, right? That we could use the leftover inedible parts of processed crops from the factory refuse piles to make the fuel?
The real question is how much preprocessing of the feedstock they have actually managed to do away with.
Someone had to do it.
Well, I sure hope all this takes place LONG after I'm old and dead. I happen to love driving my cars and motorcycles. Firing it up, cranking on the tunes and putting the hammer down on the road.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
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
Silage is fed primarily to dairy animals and at cow-calf operations for exactly that reason. CAFOs to my limited knowledge feed primarily straight grain blends, with a heavy emphasis on corn, and just enough roughage to help keep the fermentation down. Silage is expensive to transport. Grain is energy dense.
Uh, "if it looks roughly mouse-shaped according to my infra-red sensitive pit, eat it"? --Chris Burke 09-08-10
The A.B.E. process has been around for a while, producing acetone, butanol and ethanol via bacteria. I seem to recall some improvements on the process which create an end product which is entirely butanol. Why is isobutanol better than butanol?