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Making Fuel With Newspapers and Bacteria
Debuting on the front page, Lifyre writes "Scientists at Tulane have found a natural bacteria (dubbed TU-103) that produces butanol. While butanol-producing bacteria aren't new, there are a few important points about this particular bacterium. It is the first natural bacteria that converts cellulose directly to butanol without the cellulose needing to be processed into sugar first, and it can do this in the presence of oxygen, which kills other butanol-producing bacteria. The simplification of the process could significantly decrease the production costs of butanol. This bacteria could allow virtually any plant product, such as newspaper or grass clippings, to be used to produce fuel for conventional vehicles."
In 30 years.
Maybe.
Wouldn't it save more energy to not print so much useless paper in the first place?
So I can run my car off my cat box?
I can take a newspaper in the bathroom and produce flammable gas via a very simple process too.
deliver. Some of Shitheads. *BSD by fundamental parties,p but here All major marketing may well remain at death's door ppor priorities,
in his novel "Memoirs Found in a Bathtub", where a bacteria voraciously ate paper, causing paperalysis for the humans (no identity papers, no money, no books) and the death of the Earth's biosphere (because it ate all the trees).
Second, newspaper is already a fuel. It burns great. They even sell "portable grills" that are nothing more than big tin cans with some holes, into which you stuff some newspaper that you light afire and cook your hamburgers on top of.
Better yet, don't live in the fucking suburbs, where you need to drive to the convenience store just to buy the newspaper in the first place.
Only Americans could come up with an idea as backward and stupid as the suburbs are. Then gas prices shoot up, the American dollar falls sharply, and it starts to become a very costly lifestyle. Instead of fixing the root cause of the problem, they try one band-aid solution after another, from invading Iraq to trying to make fuel out of newspapers.
How about just going back to living in cities, like in every sensible country, where personal transportation isn't as resource-intensive?
I wonder if it's more resistant to the very butanol it produces? Some yeasts seem to have a higher tolerance for the stuff. It'll be interesting to see which, if any of these technologies take off, or if they all wind up becoming unintended vaportech.
So, we can turn old newspapers into fuel. This could create, I dunno, hundreds of gallons of fuel a year. Ok, let's say thousands. Ok ok ok, let's say a million gallons a year. This will surely make a dent in the 380 million gallons the US uses (www.eia.gov) every day.
I was going to say, this will be useful on an individual basis because it gives savvy people the opportunity to make their own fuel at home. I mean... wait a minute... I haven't bought a newspaper in probably six years. I guess I'll need to start stealing my neighbors' paper.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I've always wanted to run my car off that last ounce of warm beer left in most cans and bottles. Think you could work out a deal with local bars?
Wouldn't it turn all organic material on earth into fuel, if the bacteria escapes?
That is a serious question.
Using bacteria (or any other process) to rearrange the chemical bonds of a substance doesn't come free. It consumes energy.
From an environmental point of view, they should simply send the newspapers to coal power plants and burn them along with the coal. Those power plants have conversion rates of heat to electricity on the order of 40%, instead of about 25% that internal combustion engines of cars have. But of course, this is not about the environment, or even CO2.
Instead there seems to be some despair about the cheap oil reserves slipping out of US control, especially after the failure of the Iraq war to secure US supplies. Otherwise nobody would pursue such follies as butanol from paper scraps or ethanol from corn. All this is made worse by the inability of US politicians to comprehend that it is perfectly possible to have a standard of living superior to that of the US while using just about half the amount of energy per capita.
Sure, it would be the end of the American way of life as the world knew it - but that one is over anyway. These days resources have to be shared with the rest of the world. That is, the other 6 billion people outside of the OECD. And that rest of the world is growing with little signs of halting or even slowing down.
There are many ways to make cheap fuel, but no method really succeeded on large scale because of interest conflicts with big oil companies, nuclear industry and governments. Please search on google and you'll find plenty of solutions, sure some are fakes, but not all.
aren't newspapers rarer than oil now?
It's one step closer to Mr. Fusion
Right? We powered locomotion by burning wood long before we powered it by burning oil.
This bacteria could allow virtually any plant product, such as newspaper or grass clippings, to be used to produce fuel for conventional vehicles."
So... I could just make a chute for my lawn tractor's discharge that would go directly into the fuel tank, and it would be more or less self-powered? Neat.
It will use almost ANY plant matter. Farming waste such as corn stalks or grass clippings and fallen leaves from your lawn for example. Pretty much any place that can grow seasonal plants such as grasses can now be a source for fuel.
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
I'm picturing massive fires in landfills nationwide.
A larger component percentage of the fiber in newsprint is hemi-cellulose and lignin than cellulose. Newsprint is generally made in a mechanical process rather than a chemical process so you are going to be left with all the turpentine and tall oil in the pulp as well. Are you going to just burn the rest? It seems awfully wasteful given how expensive your process is going to be. It is generally accepted that when it comes to newsprint, it is better to burn it than to recycle it as the fuel expended in the collection of it and energy and chemicals expended to de-ink it outweigh the value of the crappy chewed up fiber you get from recovering it. I am a process engineer in a paper mill
I don't believe this will ever actually get fuel to the pump in any reasonable quantity, but if someone ever invents a roomba powered by dog hair, I'm definitely in line for that.
But I suspect it'd weigh 800 pounds and you'd have to feed three medium-sized dogs to it to get your living room vacuumed.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
and what about the cost? When I can get 5800000 Btu out of a barrel of it for 85 bucks or so, do let me know.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
This probably doesn't account for all the energy, but I believe most modern paper mills are mostly self-powered from the waste products from the paper making process itself:
Black Liquor (no, not booze)
That is, they use energy extracted from the wood to run the pulp mills. Since the energy in plant matter comes from the Sun, I don't see a lot of compelling need to recycle paper. However, if it makes economic sense, sure, why not. Just in general terms, of all the products mankind creates, paper seems like the least important to recycle, in terms of energy and raw materials (can always grow more trees/hemp/whatever).
I thought of it first.
Except nobody reads newspapers anymore.
Hmmmm... I got it!
iPad-powered steam car.
I thought of it first.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
Butanol makes a great substitute for avgas. I've met a pilot and seen the plane used to experiment with butanol at the Centennial Airport south of Denver, KAPA. You'll have to add some lead to burn it in a radial engine or anything with antiquated (soft) valve seats.
The local company that arranged the fuel for this little experiment was (I think) Gevo energy, www.gevo.com
Hydrocarbons are wonderful energy carriers. There's nothing terribly special about the varieties that come from the ground - except they are all cracked and odd lengths and full of nasty chemicals. Petroleum engineers simply engineer ways to extract and re-form crude into a consistent product. I do believe bacterium are perfectly capable of such things as well.
imagine what would happen if you sprayed this bacteria over the fields and forests of your enemy
...anyone?
Toilet paper
I hope this isn't what Scott Adams was talking about about: "Seriously you think there are real ones?!"