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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
Errrrrrrrrrr well i seem to recall an article right here on slashdot not more that a couple of weeks ago saying that what was it E39 or whatever they cal ethanol in the US was bieng done away with as it was not a good fuel ..
That article was about making biofuel from corn. The bottom line there is that growing the corn and fermenting it to create ethanol takes more energy than it produces.
This is about using a genetically engineered stomach organism to convert seaweed. Truly the parallels are astounding.
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.