$ $ $ $ http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article4133668.ece Damn, I love microbiology.
how many bugs would it take to make just 1 gallon though? Seems like it would take forever, and be a very very quick fix.....that wouldnt last long
Numbers are not really a big concern. It is relatively easy to grow 5 x10^8 cells/ml overnight. If I remember correctly, they engineered E. coli which has a doubling time of 20 minutes.
For a while now, microbiologist, plant biochemist and molecular biologists have been trying to find an effective way to turn cellulosic biomass (corn stover, grasses, wood chips, etc) into ethanol to add to gasoline. This is a far superior solution.
Since the waste matter will exist anyway, no matter how "green" we are as a species, this is incredible! It could well be another piece of an energy solution.
This is a truly amazing development, IMO. Especially the fact the 'fuel' produced is damn near ready for consumption. God, how I would love to this come to pass so we can tell those Middle Eastern douchebags to go pound sand.
However, to substitute America’s weekly oil consumption of 143 million barrels, you would need a facility that covered about 205 square miles, an area roughly the size of Chicago. Once you start breaking that large area down and distribute it all over the states depending on the energy needs and population of each area the size requirements really come down in total area. Even just putting one facility in each individual state and you have it broken down to almost 1 facility @ almost 4 square miles. This would truly be an incredible breakthrough if it can work on a national level and yes I agree with opfinistic we can tell the Arab countries to pound sound.
The key isn't how many bugs you need. The key is how much "waste" you need. I'm pretty sure we don't produce enough of the "waste" necessary to make a big dent in the fuel supply. And, if we made the decision to try and produce more of it, the things we're using in the waste strike me as petroleum intensive in the creation process. It sounds nice but this doesn't strike me as something that is "the future". This is small time, IMO. Like getting excited over the modifications you can make to a diesel engine to where it can run on used McDonalds vegetable oil.
It depends on the ratio of carbon in to carbon out. In this case, they claim that the process is carbon negative -- more carbon is used than produced. By how much, is unknown at this point. If you take X amount of current waste and produce X-1 liters of oil, you have rid the world's landfills of biocellulose by X amount and increased the worlds available oil by X-1. IMO, this is huge.
Do we know for sure that the material that would be used is useless? Do we know how much of the material is needed in order to be useful? And this carbon negative idea seems to me to be a rationalization. It assumes that the waste used for the bugs' fuel is produced purely for the oil excretion. This is false. The waste they've talked about has been produced for other reasons. In other words, you're turning a heavily carbon negative process into something closer to a carbon neutral (but supposedly still negative) process. What would have happened to the waste if you don't use it for this oil excretion process? If the alternative to using the waste for oil bugs doesn't involve spitting out more carbon than a car, this is not really a carbon negative solution...it's virtually the same as finding an untapped oil reserve.
So far, yes -- until now. Most organisms don't make cellulase and cannot convert cellulose to sugars so that material goes to waste. The waste is produced as a result of a gene that has been added to a plasmid, much the same way that human insulin is made. Microorganisms are engineered to produce secondary products. In this case, the secondary product is oil. You may not understand the concept of carbon negative in the way it is used here but it is not false. For example, if 1.5 moles of carbon are taken in by the microorganism to produce 1 mole of hydrocarbon. When you burn the 1 mole of hydrocarbon, you release less that one mole of CO2 as waste. Part of the carbon is converted to heat energy. That overall process is negative. As far as the overall stoichiometry of hydrocarbon into a car and CO2 released into the atmosphere, that will not change.
I misunderstood the labeling of the process as "carbon negative". What I was saying is just as valid, though. What would have happened to the waste if not used for oil bugs? If the carbon stored in this waste would not have reached the atmosphere the same way it does when it is burned by an automobile, then by turning it into fuel you are in fact adding carbon to our output. It is like I said, like finding a new untapped oil reserves.
Depends on what problem you are trying to solve. If you are trying to solve "global warming" or "pollution" you are 100% correct. If you are trying to solve "new source of oil" then what you said doesn't have merit to that discussion. I am waiting for the microbes that can turn brocolli into healthy cookies n cream ice cream. All the benefits of brocolli and all of the taste of delicious ice cream. Come Science GET ON IT!!
Seems similar to what im hearing about people and the use of Nanotech, cool stuff all around. CNC brings up a valid point though, what kind of things might happen if these engineered microbes "escape" or such?
The carbon in cellulose would eventually be completely released as CO2 by cellulase in fungi. Some of that would be sequestered in soil if you were to till it in but at the expense of releasing more CO2 by actually tilling process. Currently much of the celluosic biomass is destroyed by burning. Some of the remaining cellulose is chipped and spread. These methods give no return as large a beneficial as does this new technology but still results in CO2 production. I agree that this an untapped new oil reserve but it is much more -- it is completely renewable.
Engineered microbes such as these, are typically engineered with a selectable marker. As good example that you might use on this type of application is to mutate a gene for the synthesis of an amino acid that the microorganism typically makes on its own and then supplement the medium with that amino acid. Any escapees would perish when it ran out of the optimal medium.
Malcolm, I didn't have a chance to read the article last night but now after doing so, I think that the thread title is a bit misleading. When I saw garbage I thought of stuff that's in landfills, disposable plastic products and the like. That got me really excited and if they can one day engineer such a microbe, great! I think that algae is still a better option. All you need is light and water. It's kind of ironic that I'm writing this coming on the heels of Charlie Crist flip-flopping and announcing his support for exploratory drilling off Florida's coast especially when in theory Florida could lead the world in algae-based biofuel production.
Actually, as I understand it, a diesel engine will run as is on used cooking oil, assuming the oil is filtered a few times first. It's not ironic at all; this "solution" has got to be a VERY long time in coming. Even if it can replace half of America's need for oil (an extremely optimistic estimate, I would think), we're still going to need good old-fashioned Texas Tea. Drill, drill, drill, dammit! Not to be the turd in the punch bowl here, because turning crap into oil without any negative environmental impact is a delightful idea, but has anyone considered how much this might cost? If someone (let's say ExxonMobil) is building a giant facility roughly the size of a city, with trillions of these "bugs", requiring trash collection (or whatever), regular maintenance, surely a pretty good-sized staff of science guys, and etc....that's got to be insanely expensive. Probably not cost-effective for a long time, even if each of the oil companies build smaller facilities for this purpose. It's a great start, and a tremendous development, but I suspect it's a LONG time before we'll see anything from it.
I realize that, but I think you were missing my point. I was talking about supply. You can get excited over the fact that you can modify your diesel engine to run on the used cooking oil, but it is in no way a solution. There isn't enough used cooking oil out there to put a dent in our gas costs. Sort of like how cheap drugs in Canada look nice, but Canada has a fraction of the US' population and allowing US citizens to buy drugs from Canada is in no way a solution to high drug prices. As for the cost issues you mentioned, the article has a part where the guys believe they could start a plant and produce oil that costs them about $50 a barrel. I don't think the costs are as insane as you might think. No more costly than oil refining.
Not only did I understand your point quite well but I agree completely. The amount of "waste", or whatever's to be used, is a limiting factor. Maybe we could produce enough waste to manufacture enough oil to meet the needs of, I don't know, New England, but the entire country is a stretch. I was just observing that as I understand it, no modifications are necessary to a diesel engine to run on cooking oil. It was a side point, nothing more. If indeed they're using Brazilian sugar cane as the base for this, then it becomes even less viable as a "crush our dependence on foreign oil" method. Sugar cane's hard to grow, requires a lot of room, and depletes the soil. We may find that savings at the gas pump are promptly returned at the grocery store, in the form of higher food costs (this is the same problem as corn-based ethanol). If they can make this work for $50/bbl, that's great news. I'm skeptical about that number, however, as breakthroughs like this tend to be followed by overly optimistic news, and not accounting for cost overruns. $50 per barrel makes for attention-getting, grant-receiving headlines at a time when we're well over $100/bbl for oil. Even so, if they can bring it in for $75 a barrel, a full 50% cost overrun, it's a nice savings. So, it's good news, if not as great as we might initially hope.
Yeah the sugar cane thing raises an eyebrow. Is sugar cane particularly potent and is that why they floated it as the means of getting $50 per barrel oil? And, as you say, sugar cane is an incredibly depleting and wasteful process. We could be looking at the same thing as what corn is doing to food prices.
There is no scientific paper on this clone yet but I suspect that they are using sugarcane waste from the stalk (cellulose, etc), and not the sugars. If that is the case, they should get the same results by using switch grasses and corn stover.
http://www.goodcleantech.com/2007/09/florida_to_use_citrus_waste_fo.php "Florida Power and Light has partnered with Citrus Energy LLC to develop a commercial plant that will convert "orange and grapefruit waste"--(pulp, more or less)--into ethanol, to be sold in Florida gas stations. Usually, leftover pulp is put into animal feed. The plant will be built in the southern Hendry County. It's expected to produce about 4 million gallons a year, and will also be able to process sugar cane." http://news.ufl.edu/2005/05/03/ethanol/ GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Half the automotive fuel in the United States could be replaced with ethanol from renewable agricultural crops and forest wastes, says a University of Florida researcher who has developed a biotechnology “bug” that converts biomass and other farm wastes into fuel. There are more and more sources for production of Ethanol scientists are discovering everyday and the fact our Congress just pushed through the latest farm bill with the corn ethanol provisions still intact was pitiful to say the least. The last article I posted from the UF also states a plant built in Jennings Louisiana will use the waste from sugar cane to produce 30 million gallons of Ethanol a year. Fact is the technology is already in place to produce ethanol from waste sources and not our FOOD!
Curious, would the waste pulp that usually goes into livestock feed drive up feed prices which would drive up the price of meat?
Not sure, but I would have to think they can come up with others sources for cattle feed. I suspect the citrus pulp into cattle feed may have just been a way of using it instead of just throwing it out.
I'm not all that surprised. I think everytime I eat something from McDonalds, I end up crapping out some crude oil myself. Black Gold, Texas Tea........