Slashdot Mirror
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.
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...
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.
but you need to buy the propane accessories to make the fire come out.
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.”
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.'"
So calling it "environmentally friendly" is a bit of a stretch. It's environmentally moderate, perhaps.
No, they probably realized that propane was an easy target for ecoli and put some work to make it happen. TBH this is more likely to control and patent the process rather than release it ever to the public. Fat chance plebs get their hands on propane conversion kits and any mass production of this stuff gets underway.
Big oil already has massive construction and infrastructure production under way for nat gas from ocean vents.
And ironically there is so much natural gas available that it could be cheaply gathered from the planet for a few hundred years before worrying about renewables.
This application will probably end up having most implementations in space or somewhere where it would be more benificial to reprocess waste into gas.
...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!
They used to call it nature. They used to call it forest. They used to call it savanna.
Today, they call it "biomass".
Yeah, you need that steel tooth and that flint implant on the tip of your tongue plus a little practice.
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
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
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."
Yes. And if the frackers were required to incorporate the external costs, it would be more expensive still.
I take it you mean LPG liquefaction and liquid storage is cheaper/easier than LNG. CNG is certainly common and useful, just not very compact, even at 3,000 psi. LNG is arguably safer, however, as it's lighter than air, whereas a major LPG leak can leave a lot of gas at ground level. And LNG is cold enough to quench hot bullets if they penetrate the tank. LPG isn't particularly cold until you evaporate some of it.
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!
I can work with that.
Suborbital [spaceflight] is the special olympics of spaceflight. - Rei