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Engineered Stomach Microbe Converts Seaweed Into Ethanol
PolygamousRanchKid writes "Seaweed may well be an ideal plant to turn into biofuel. It grows in much of the two thirds of the planet that is underwater, so it wouldn't crowd out food crops the way corn for ethanol does. Because it draws its own nutrients and water from the sea, it requires no fertilizer or irrigation. Most importantly for would-be biofuel-makers, it contains no lignin—a strong strand of complex sugars that stiffens plant stalks and poses a big obstacle to turning land-based plants such as switchgrass into biofuel. Researchers at Bio Architecture Lab, Inc., (BAL) and the University of Washington in Seattle have now taken the first step to exploit the natural advantages of seaweed. They have built a microbe capable of digesting it and converting it into ethanol or other chemicals. Synthetic biologist Yasuo Yoshikuni, a co-founder of BAL, and his colleagues took Escherichia coli, a gut bacterium most famous as a food contaminant, and made some genetic modifications that give it the ability to turn the sugars in an edible kelp called kombu into fuel."
so thats the fuel problem solved then
I hope someone finds a way to convert weed into ethanol, and weed will be grown everywhere.
That would be like a dream come true.
So... how long until this microbe gets into the wild and we end up with an ocean of ethanol...?
If they can keep this GMO sequestered in a watertight tank and remember that it could possibly destroy the ocean it would help the population of the world. It's sort of silly, however, that they spent all those resources creating this GMO when hemp is a very common and old source for ethanol. But nooo, we don't want to upset the fine folks at Dow, Goodyear, or Monsanto do we. Let's forget hemp and create a new organism.
Eat microbes. Have some sushi. Get drunk.
is ideal - most of the seaweed i see on the market runs more than $10 an ounce, making corn ethanol look like a fabulous deal at $16.78 a gallon for the consumer...
For the sake of argument, lets say it works and pretty soon the ocean is all fenced off like Nebraska and each family farmer (multinational corp) has their own little farm (ocean). All this does is push off the problems of over populating a little bit further all the while putting pressure new pressures on the environment. While kelp would capture CO from the atmosphere in equal parts to those exhausted when burnt, I'm sure we are not taking into account the other things it will be removing from the seas. What affect might that have? No one knows. While the Capitalist ethic of "Drive it hard and fix what breaks." is romantic, it is also dangerous and doesn't take into account the people they kill along the way. I think I'd prefer to have a substantive conversation on the population control instead of only looking for more resources to exploit. Eventually Malthus will catch up to us, why not stop running from him and face his challenge. Better now while only 7 billion people will have to suffer rather than 12 billion in 20 or 30 years.
But considering the fact of global warming/climate change and the topic of greenhouse gases, isn't our core problem that we are simply burning too much stuff? With that in mind, is this really going to help?
Shouldn't our focus be on creating forms of energy that produce energy without burning things?
Your hired scientists will come up with "research" that proves this is not working either. The math will be impeccable! The quotations will be spread across the land just like your oil derricks!
... in producing fire-breathing sea monsters.
Currently there are millions unemployed. They should be converted into bio-fuels so they can actually do something useful for this country.
Seaweed is a key component of the ocean ecosystem, providing a safe environment - and indeed a source of food - for other sea life. Mass harvesting seaweed would impact this broader ecosystem, and in unknown ways. At the least it could hurt fisheries. It might be nice to understand this impact before 'seaweed farmers' go out and clear cut huge swaths of seaweed forests!
Wasn't the sweet crude petroleum formed millions of years ago by decaying seaweed and soft bodied marine creatures? So in a way this enigneered microbe is just accelerating the natural process by about 100 million years.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
This must be why they like Sushi so much!
Yet another inefficient solar collector that will save the world from oil dependence. I'm so sure we can scale up production to replace the 160 exajoules of energy provided by oil (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_mile_of_oil#Definition_and_energy_equivalents), which is what's currently required each year by industrial civilization.
Man, I just can't get enough of these "The energy crisis is solved!" stories. I've loved them since I was a kid in the 60s. Funny, how we're still gulping that oil though.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Watch in the employment sites for adverts :John Deere u/w combine harvester operators needed. Deep Diving experience compulsory.
So here's how it goes, this microbe is transplanted back into a human stomach like mine, right, and then I eat kombu and get wayyyyystteeed. Whatever about fuel, this thing is making free* moonshine.
*I bet seaweed's pretty cheap
The oceans become self sustaining fireballs and the earth becomes a second sun!!!!
I'll volunteer to join the Big Daddies!
I figure after I eat those microbes I could get drunk just by eating seaweed. I could just live at the beach .. perfect.
But seaweed is a food, so yes it would.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The WSJ had an article last month on the Cellulosic Ethanol Debacle. The various approaches just haven't worked at all. Try whatever tabletop approach catches your fancy but in the real world lignin just doesn't scale up to anything approaching meaningful commercial volumes, as of yet anyway. And our tax dollars go towards these attempts, keep in mind.
People have been fiddling about with these approaches for almost a century too, and making all manner of grandiose claims; I've parsed news clippings from the 1920s promising a coming era of limitless cheap ethanol to replace rock oil. It would take catastrophically high crude oil prices to really spur development here, but chances are we'd also turn to dirtier approaches like coal-to-liquids which are somewhat more profitable and scalable; or simply employ conservation to the point where the price would drop back down anyway. The International Energy Agency had an excellent document on approaches for
Saving Oil in a Hurry, which may be of interest.
We'll turn the entire ocean into BOOZE! :)
Personally, I rather have a real biologist working on this than a synthetic one.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
So it's good that this research is privately funded and isn't wasting taxes.
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To say nothing of the carbon captured by the seaweed as it grows, and sequestered on the seabed. This sounds like a recipe for making climate change worse faster.
Korma: Good
Where will it come from? How will it be delivered?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Is.
Google will tell you.
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I can see the massive dredges now, ripping out all the life in our oceans in the name of 'clean' energy.
seaweed is fairly easy to grow artificial, and can be done at minimal impact in surface water out at sea.
as long as you thrown back into the sea any waste products that are left after the ethanol production this whole process can be pretty much a closed loop, except for the solar energy used by the seaweed to grow
and could even provide additional habitat for fish and other sea life, provided the harvesting method isn't too destructive (but i imagine that it would just involve removing the structures the sea weed grows from the water before harvesting.)
"It grows in much of the two thirds of the planet that is underwater, so it wouldn't crowd out food crops the way corn for ethanol does. "
There is so much uneducated FUD about biofuel which only goes to show that the best of intentions among environmentalists and world hunger activists can have adverse environmental and social impacts. If use of corn for ethanol was an issue I would expect the vulnerable third world countries to be crying out for the US to sell them corn, but that isn't the case. The third world is attempting to curb the expansion of US production of corn. See e.g. http://prospectjournal.ucsd.edu/index.php/2010/04/nafta-and-u-s-corn-subsidies-explaining-the-displacement-of-mexicos-corn-farmers/ http://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/truth.pdf
If people want to solve a problem, at least decide what the problem is. What is the greater evil, too much or too little corn?
As a side note, seaweed biofuels may be a better solution to bio-fuels - or it may not. Treating the environment and problems of world hunger as questions with such a simple answer is dangerous.
Why have 1 person driving a backhoe when you could employ 20 with shovels?
Not long ago I watched a TV program that presented the work of Japanese scientist Izuru Senaha . He have found that seaweed grows optimally at 2% CO2 concentration (72 times the normal concentration in sea water). They use method (developed by Masanori Hiraoka) where the seaweeds are in constant motion to boost their growth.
He is making experiments by collecting CO2 from local power plants and using it to grow seaweed.
It would make a lot more sense to have farms for rapid growth than having to collect seaweed from the ocean.
This method alone could be great for collecting the carbon from the air and making it into solid form (thus reversing the greenhouse effect). But that would not be profitable on its own.
Will this work with aquatic milfoil? Because I know a few places that would be happy to part with theirs.
Have gnu, will travel.
I'd just like to point out that E. coli is not a "stomach microbe." The bacteria referred to as gut flora reside almost entirely in the colon. If you do have E. coli in your stomach, I urge you to improve your sanitary infrastructure or stop frequenting that shady corner deli for lunch.
Minor correction, the normal concentration in sea water is 0.035%. This means the 2% is actually about 57-60 times the norm.
They should look for some way to do this with Kudzu. So far as I am aware, there is no other redeeming value, and apparently its growth rate if phenomenal.
For example compared to the previous years?
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Since seaweed and algae can already be converted into oil...
http://www.eurozone-invest.com/seaweedoil.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22187812/ns/us_news-environment/t/seaweed-solution-warming-not-so-fast/#.TxxfqDjYN5M
http://sequestration.mit.edu/pdf/Quiviger_thesis.pdf
The question arises, which method is more efficient? Which method creates a more stable fuel? Which method has the least environmental impact?
the carbon is not sequestered. its made into ethanol.
It gets loose, we face a major eco disaster and the company sues anyone that dares to complain. This one's got me worried. We've already got overfishing and trawlers messing everything up. Pretty soon we'll see trawling for seaweed I suppose.
That would have been funny if you'd left the "d" off "weed".
With all the weird, at least from our point of view, products on the Japanese market, how long do you think it will be before there is Kombu Whiskey on the shelves there, considering they would probably have to age it a bit first!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but seaweed is food, right? So like growing corn for ethanol means we can grow less corn for food, doesn't that mean using seaweed for ethanol also mean we can grow less for food?
..would this bacteria survive in my gut? I like the idea of being able to convert my food into alcohol within my bowels..
1) Eat bacteria
2) Eat seaweed
3) Pass out on grass
What about collecting CO2 from the output of fossil fuel power plants, etc, near the ocean and feeding it into/through special beds of kelp that are designed to be harvested for fuel?
not only that, carbon sequestration is a good thing (tm)
... you really think that mankind will survive the next 100 years?
One day we will make some terrible, not reverseable mistake.
I always have a bad feeling about these things.