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Researchers Harness E. Coli To Produce Propane
Rambo Tribble writes A team of British and Finnish scientists have used the common bacteria Escherichia coli to produce the environmentally-friendly fuel propane. By introducing enzymes to modify the bacteria's process for producing cell membranes, they were able directly produce fuel-grade propane. While commercial application is some years off, the process is being hailed as a cheap, sustainable alternative to deriving the gas from fossil fuel production. As researcher Patrik Jones is quoted as saying, "Fossil fuels are a finite resource and...we are going to have to come up with new ways to meet increasing energy demands."
Boy scouts and others were way ahead
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Hank Hill wants to know, because he sells propane and propane accessories.
"We chose propane because it can be separated from the natural process with minimal energy and it will be compatible with the existing infrastructure for easy use"
I bet it would be more honest to say that "we researched this thing and found out it generates propane" instead of saying that yeah, we sat down and figured that propane! that's what we need! and then started digging how to make it happen..
Now with your very own infection you too can become a dragon.
I will have to claim prior art. My family has been manufacturing methane the same way for generations.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
A environment-friendly way of producing something does not mean that the product is suddenly environmentelly-friendly to begin with. If I get a set of bacteria to produce gasoline, would this suddenly be called 'the envrionmentally-friendly fuel gasoline'?
Is there a better write-up somewhere? It only says it uses fatty acids. What is the source of these fatty acids?
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Am I only one to instantly remember this novel?
Absence of proof != proof of absence.
would be a reasonably critical part of the e-coli staying alive...
WTF? It doesn't matter if you dig propane out of the ground of make it from pure energy using a Universal Constructor. When you burn it in oxygen, it will produce CO2, contributing to global warming. Propane is no more an "environmentally-friendly fuel" than any other hydrocarbon is.
Unless you use plant biomass which takes that carbon from the air. That is why I was trying to find what they used as a feedstock.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Here's the abstract: http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140902/ncomms5731/full/ncomms5731.html
From one of the diagrams it seems that they are taking glucose as the primary source, i.e., pretty normal (for a laboratory model) E. coli food. I would also have preferred them to come out and say it explicitly.
Interesting quote from another writeup at http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/09/03/3478373/propane-from-e-coli/ : “At the moment, we don’t have a full grasp of exactly how the fuel molecules are made, so we are now trying to find out exactly how this process unfolds,” he said. “I hope that over the next 5 to 10 years we will be able to achieve commercially viable processes that will sustainably fuel our energy demands.”
Can't live with them, can't kill them.
Unless you use plant biomass which takes that carbon from the air. That is why I was trying to find what they used as a feedstock.
From what I can gather the carbon source in the paper was glucose, but the pathway forks off from E. coli's normal fatty acid biosynthesis pathway so in theory anything which the bacteria can use as a carbon source could work. It'd be interesting to see someone try to engineer this pathway into lignocellulose-degrading microorganisms.
Apparently, some scientist from UK and Finland.
Sure, there are some trivial conversion issues, but overall it's a well-known problem. For modern propane systems which use injectors it requires less equipment replacement than ever, only recoding. And you just drop your biomass in a big bag and let it ferment. It's not just carbon-neutral, it's carbon-negative (if you can keep from fouling your membranes and thus you don't need to be replacing them repeatedly) because some of the carbon stays behind and is returned to the soil in the resulting fertilizer "waste".
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Fossil fuels? Like the decaying mass of dinosaurs and large ferns have descended to depths of 3 miles?
So calling it "environmentally friendly" is a bit of a stretch. It's environmentally moderate, perhaps.
...let's be accurate: Fossil Fuels are NOT a "finite resource", just that replenishment takes a very long time.
-Styopa
Is there any danger of this getting into anyone's intestines and living there? I wouldn't want propane farts!
What is the source of these fatty acids?
Fatties.
They used to call it nature. They used to call it forest. They used to call it savanna.
Today, they call it "biomass".
Everything organic on Earth starts with plant biomass. The question is basically how recent was it formerly plant material,
An intestinal bacteria, you say.
I will have to claim prior art. My family has been manufacturing methane the same way for generations.
If you knew the slightest thing about chemistry you'd know that Propane and Methane are not the same gas.
Nothing kills an embarrassingly obvious joke more than a TBU (true-but-useless) tidbit.
Here, read this to celebrate your technically correct moment of glory :) http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Feb-17.html
Archea that feed of carbon dioxide, water, and alpha radiation?
Sulfur/iron reducers?
Well, as it turns out, pigs are very efficient feed converters. About 3 pounds of vegetable input to produce 1 pound of pork. Much more efficient than most other meat animals. So, just insert pigs in the loop. Biomass takes carbon from the air. Pigs eat biomass, product fertilizer that boost biomass production, with an opportunity to siphon off methane. Bacteria eat fatty acids in the form of pork. It's just an extra step in the loop.
Bacon *is* the answer, in this case.
Why are all these wonderful solutions to all the worlds ills always "commercial application is some years off,"?
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
...are also needed...to collect methane created by animals, namely cows (so the story goes).
Such devices already exist for landfill locations since decaying garbage deposited there by humans tends to be converted over time to methane.
I even read about it on slashdot.
Which is what I'd hope to get out of this, something that can be done on a medium-sized or smaller farm. Or under my house, but for the explosion hazard. Decentralized bacon byproduct!