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Fungi From Guts Of Herbivores Could Help Us Make Biofuel (dispatchtribunal.com)
hypnosec writes: Researchers have revealed through a new study that fungi from the gut of herbivores like goats, horses and sheep could be used to make biofuel. According to researchers at University of California, Santa Barbara, the fungi retrieved from these animals are capable of converting plant material into sugars that can be easily used to make biofuel and other products at the same efficiency as the best fungi engineering in the industry. Michelle O'Malley, lead author of the paper and professor of chemical engineering at the University, explains that these fungi naturally have the best possible set of enzymes for the job of breaking down biomass and as per their findings, these enzymes work together to break down stubborn plant material.
Every time I read an article on bio fuels or alternate fuels it makes me wonder how the OPEC nations will react if any of those experiments actually yields a sustainable and equivalent alternative to oil.
Should I need to tell that worse than nazi fuck heads, this project againt alien attack based on terrorist attack traumas during the olympic games believes (haha nice use of an word) that a bunch of son of a gods freaks too. (basically those guys who escapes alcohol or sex addiction using the name of the Loooooorda \o/) can help. That's sick. So sick.
I am a vegan rather than a herbivore but if anyone would like to make me an offer for my gut flora, please PM me.
Why do many environmentalist hate oil and diesel that occurred naturally on our planet, but get so excited about bio-diesel that takes up land and energy to produce that could be used for feeding people or other positive purposes?
Even the name bio-diesel is sideways and laughable. I'm going to start selling organic-oil, it's exactly like regular oil, only it makes leftist feel better when consuming it.
Respect the Constitution
Fungi From Guts Of Herbivores Could Help Us Make Biofuel
When you say "us"...?
Because I produce quite enough volatile substances already, thanks.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I saw something on TV when I was a kid about villages in India where they shovel all the cow shite into a tank and use the methane that comes off as fuel.
It wouldn't surprise me if someone comes up with a way of powering a ship by harnessing and/or deflecting ambient air movements. Not to mention a method of propelling projectiles by harnessing energy in tension and/or torsion of ligneous substances.
They'd probably patent them and posthumously sue Nelson & Henry V too - and win.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The notion of collecting farts from cattle for use as fuel has been around for decades. Simply design a closed barn and separate the methane produced by the cattle from the air and you have fuel. Solid waste from cattle can also be used as a fuel. I have cooked over cow chips while camping as did many of our ancestors. The fuel produced by cattle may pay better than the selling of their meat and hides.
Not more killing?
can only exist by taking money at gunpoint from productive people and enterprises. Biofuels are just like herbivores (and for the same reasons). They both extract energy from very-low energy-density vegitation. Herbivores spend most of their lives eating vegitation because there's so little energy in the stuff that a huge amount must be consumed. Carnivores spend far less time eating because they get their energy eating the meat of herbivores. It's a very basic reality.
We have a planet that is very rich in very high energy-density resources like coal, oil, natural gas (which are made by applying enormous pressures and temperatures to vast amounts of biomass over millions of years) and also things like uranium.... but then we have morons who want us to skip all the high-energy-density naturally-occurring energy sources and become the industrial version of cows - choosing the lowest-energy-density least-efficient and least-economical energy sources.
This is complete lunacy and it's being pushed most in the Western world to further the cause of de-industrialization in pursuit of an anti-western-civilization agenda.
Oh, and if you are a left-leaner who is upset at the idea that taxes are equivalent to armed robbery, I suggest the following experiment for you to prove your point: Don't pay your taxes. Then when the government tries to collect those taxes, resist. At some point, the government will pull guns and point them at you, and if you keep resisting they will shoot you. This is no different from a robber who first asks for your wallet and your watch, but eventually pulls a gun and shoots you if you resist. The founders of the United States did not institute an income tax and would have been stunned that their descendants did it.
We have a planet that is very rich in very high energy-density resources like coal, oil, natural gas (which are made by applying enormous pressures and temperatures to vast amounts of biomass over millions of years) and also things like uranium.... but then we have morons who want us to skip all the high-energy-density naturally-occurring energy sources and become the industrial version of cows - choosing the lowest-energy-density least-efficient and least-economical energy sources.
Have you heard of the carbon cycle? And radioactive half-lives?
These natural high density energy sources are super convenient, but there are genuine risks and environmental impact. It can be argued that we'll be paying for the deferred costs of these impacts for a long time yet.
Biofuel on the other hand a closed cycle and far more sustainable, which in itself is a worthy goal to pursue.
BP and DuPont's company Butamax has been fighting with GE Energy Venture's biofuel concern Gevo over who gets to make Butanol for years now. Butamax has got their hands on some basic patents for making the process cost-effective, based on technologies developed at public university and partially with your tax dollars. Recently the patent office declared all of the claims of one of Gevo's central patents invalid, which is unfortunate for you and I because Butamax is not actually trying to sell us fuel and Gevo is.
We therefore already have the technology to make a 1:1 replacement for gasoline which can be made from any organic matter, by bacteria, and we could be running our cars on it right now if only our government had not become primarily a tool for bludgeoning common sense soundly about the neck and head for the sake of profit.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I keep hearing about how we can use "agricultural waste" to make bio-fuel but that is a lie, there is no agricultural waste. What is this "waste" exactly? What do you think happens to it now?
This "waste" is usually described as cornstalks and other chaff made from the growing of (obviously) corn and other food crops. I grew up on a dairy farm and we'd use those corn stalks as bedding for the cattle, so they'd have a warm and dry place to rest. After those cornstalks are soaked with cattle manure it is collected and spread on the fields. Those corn stalks return vital nutrients to the soil, control erosion, and hold that manure (and other fertilizers) in place for the next crop.
I suspect a lot of people that live in high rise apartments, that never saw a cow that wasn't served on a plate, think that these corn stalks are hauled off to put in landfills. If we convert cornstalks to fuel then we are going to see another dust bowl in the Midwest.
I suspect that some vegan would like to point out how we should not be eating meat or drinking milk anyway, we don't need to bed cattle with cornstalks or feed that cattle corn. Okay then, if we harvest all that corn to eat, and haul off the stalks for fuel, then what is holding the soil in place? What is going to keep that topsoil from just blowing away and get carried out to sea by rivers? Answer, the corn stalks that should not be taken out of the field.
I read an interesting paper on how we could mine basalt, grind it up, and spread on farm land to return nutrients to the field and fix carbon out of the air into the soil. That's something I can support. Use nuclear power to produce that basalt fertilizer rather than the fossil fueled lime kilns we use now, we'd go from carbon positive to carbon negative. We'd also be building up topsoil rather than hauling it away to make fuel. This fuel, by the way, could also be produced from nuclear power in a carbon neutral or perhaps even carbon negative way.
I'm not even a agronomist or anything like that. I'm just an Iowa farm boy that grew up to write code. Even I see this as an environmental disaster. Do these bio-fuel people even talk to farmers? Did they not do some sort of environmental impact study on removing vital erosion control material, like corn stalks, from fields? Perhaps they did do their homework and I'm missing something important. If so then I'd like someone to point out what I'm missing.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
You grew up on a diary farm. But generally, the fields where they grow wheat and corn are not close to the places with cattle in stables. I've wondered about what they do with the giant rolls of straw that you see on the fields in autumn in places where there is no cattle (experience in Europe). It may be economic to truck them to livestock farms, although I suspect that some of it is burnt in coal power plants to greenwash electricity. But certainly it's not economic to ship it back once it's soaked with manure. There would be more straw-manure-filled trucks on the road and machines in the field handling it.
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I do not think that producing biofuel is such an disaster, of course depending on how you implement it. In Germany quite a few farmers already produce biogas using large fermenters on their farm, most often then to directly use it for electricity and heat production, as pressurizing it is too costly. But well, all you are doing is pumping some cubic metres of liquid manure and some other decomposable materials in a huge tank and let anaerobic digestion do their work. As it turns out this even improves the fertilizing properties of the leftovers, since you create an optimal environment for the bacteria involved in the rotting process, just like in a well structured composter.
Holding the soil in place can be done via in-between-cultures like mustard or spinache. Of course then one can not use only one crop specifically designed to withstand herbicides and kill off absolutely all other plants on the ground, as it is commonly practiced and doing a huge environmental damage, not only on the soil itself, but also on the surrounding ecosystem (bee colony collapse for example).
The real problem here is that bio fuel is often used as an incentive to further subventionize farmers and the malpractice of huge mono cultures, especially of corn. Mining stuff to undo a bit of the damage done by these is just another bad idea.
I keep hearing about how we can use "agricultural waste" to make bio-fuel but that is a lie, there is no agricultural waste. What is this "waste" exactly? What do you think happens to it now?
This "waste" is usually described as cornstalks and other chaff made from the growing of (obviously) corn and other food crops. I grew up on a dairy farm and we'd use those corn stalks as bedding for the cattle, so they'd have a warm and dry place to rest. After those cornstalks are soaked with cattle manure it is collected and spread on the fields. Those corn stalks return vital nutrients to the soil, control erosion, and hold that manure (and other fertilizers) in place for the next crop.
I suspect a lot of people that live in high rise apartments, that never saw a cow that wasn't served on a plate, think that these corn stalks are hauled off to put in landfills. If we convert cornstalks to fuel then we are going to see another dust bowl in the Midwest.
You have a point, but it also falls short on the fact that energy can be collected from biomass while the nutrients are recycled into the soil. This is what anaerobic digestion offers, eg. how biogas is produced. Look it up, it's awesome stuff!
In most cases, those aren't "rolls of straw". They're rolls of hay and they're being left in the field to ferment, thereby increasing their nutritave value to the ruminants they will be fed to. Look up silage.
Making food and oil into a single market is a terrible idea for everyone, and a deadly idea for the global south. Biofuel hippies need to slow their roll. This technology may be worse for humanity in retrospect than the nuclear bomb, just less dramatic.
Pull my hoof.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Biofuel on the other hand a closed cycle and far more sustainable, which in itself is a worthy goal to pursue.
I believe you're mooching off the biosphere then. You're taking a closed cycle, and substract energy/materials from it to turn them into transportation, residential heating, industrial processes and so on. With lavish energy use and economic output like we have now, leave alone economic growth, this will quickly lead to soil depletion, water depletion, deforestation, desertification and famine.
Bio-fuel economy is like going to ancient times such as Roman Empire, medieval ages and so on : that worked out somehow but was hard to sustain over centuries. A hell lot of land was cleared. You gotta feed those legions, horses and oxen.
I'm far from having hard numbers, but rather than US/Europe lifestyle I suppose bio fuels might support North Korea levels of personal transportation i.e. cars for the 0.1% (and even then the elites aren't doing 100-mile daily commutes in that country).
They use the same machines for straw and hay, but don't worry: I can tell the difference.
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Some of it also comes from sources a little further down the line, at the manufacturing level. Take something like potato waste as an example. Minnesota produces roughly 400,000 tons of potato waste per year. Some of that can be used as feed, but it has to be cut with other materials. Some of it can be used as fertilizer. But they aren't necessarily able to use it all efficiently. Why not turn some of it into fuel?