Better biofuel: Stephen del Cardayre, a biochemist and LS9's vice president for research and development.
Saul Bromberger and Sandra Hoover
A biotech startup wants to coax fuels from engineered microbes.
The biofuel of the future could well be gasoline. That's the hope of one biotech startup that on Monday described for the first time how it is coaxing bacteria into producing hydrocarbons that could be processed into fuels like those made from petroleum.
LS9, a company based in San Carlos, CA, and founded by geneticist George Church, of Harvard Medical School, and plant biologist Chris Somerville, of Stanford University, had previously said that it was working on what it calls "renewable petroleum." But at a Society for Industrial Microbiology conference on Monday, the company began speaking more openly about what it has accomplished: it has genetically engineered various bacteria, including E. coli, to custom-produce hydrocarbon chains.
To do this, the company is employing tools from the field of synthetic biology to modify the genetic pathways that bacteria, plants, and animals use to make fatty acids, one of the main ways that organisms store energy. Fatty acids are chains of carbon and hydrogen atoms strung together in a particular arrangement, with a carboxylic acid group made of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen attached at one end. Take away the acid, and you're left with a hydrocarbon that can be made into fuel.
"I am very impressed with what they're doing," says James Collins, codirector of the Center for Advanced Biotechnology at Boston University. He calls the company's use of synthetic biology and systems biology to engineer hydrocarbon-producing bacteria "cutting edge."
In some cases, LS9's researchers used standard recombinant DNA techniques to insert genes into the microbes. In other cases, they redesigned known genes with a computer and synthesized them. The resulting modified bacteria make and excrete hydrocarbon molecules that are the length and molecular structure the company desires.
Stephen del Cardayre, a biochemist and LS9's vice president for research and development, says the company can make hundreds of different hydrocarbon molecules. The process can yield crude oil without the contaminating sulfur that much petroleum out of the ground contains. The crude, in turn, would go to a standard refinery to be processed into automotive fuel, jet fuel, diesel fuel, or any other petroleum product that someone wanted to make.
Next year LS9 will build a pilot plant in California to test and perfect the process, and the company hopes to be selling improved biodiesel and providing synthetic biocrudes to refineries for further processing within three to five years. (See "Building Better Biofuels.")
But LS9 isn't the only company in this game. Amyris Biotechnologies, of Emeryville, CA, is also using genes from plants and animals to make microbes produce designer fuels. Neil Renninger, senior vice president of development and one of the company's cofounders, says that Amyris has also created bacteria capable of supplying renewable hydrocarbon-based fuels. The main difference between the companies, Renninger says, is that while LS9 is working on a biocrude that would be processed in a refinery, Amyris is working on directly producing fuels that would need little or no further processing.
Genetically modified algae could be efficient producers of hydrogen and biofuels.
I like what they're trying to do but it's not clean power - will not the burned gas still generate co2? I invented a gravity power plant that just uses a computer and counter weights to generate electricity. If we could just plug in our cars this would be a clean option once scaled up and perfected. (see link below)
http://www.getfirefly.net/hydraulicpowerplant.jpg
Actually, in theory this is a closed loop system - the carbon that is emitted by burning the fuel will then be absorbed by the biomass that is grown to be converted back into fuel. That is why bio-fuels, even though they emit CO2 at the time of combustion, are essentially carbon neutral energy storage mediums. Of course, in practice there are issues that may make this not as purely neutral as one would hope (emitting a lot of C02 high in the atmosphere via jet engines vs. near the surface where the plants need it, etc.)
As to your hydraulic power idea... I am a bit confused. In step 4 you state that there is nothing holding the left side weight up... but it isn't up. It's down because of the water that you added previously. In fact, as long as the right side weight is "hooked" to the ceiling, the left side won't move at all. Additionally, once the right side is released it most likely won't move either because the friction in the system will overcome the minute amount of potential energy difference in the two weights. In fact, the energy used to get the water up to the height of the individual weights will result in a total net loss in the system.
It was a neat idea, but unfortunately you are fighting against some very basic laws of physics. Sorry...
Yup, that system is a no-go, since even if the system has no loss, you can only drop the weight once, possibly on each side, for a max cycle of 2x. You need more energy from somewhere to pick it up again.
However, the basics are what drives hydro-power plants. The problem is that we've tapped all the practical hydro in the U.S. already. Maybe we could build a giant reservoir in the rockies that we could then drain through the turbine(s) to generate more hydro-electricity.
The premise that bio-based fuel production is theoretically carbon dioxide neutral because the plants grown absorb the carbon dioxide emitted from burning the fuel seems a little suspect. If the same land that produces biomass now is to produce biomass for energy production how is it absorbing any more because the biomass is used for energy? I don't believe we are speaking in terms of any new carbon dioxide sink just because the product is energy? Taking land that is now perhaps 100% negative carbon dioxide emitting and growing a crop that is converted to some pyro fuel emitting carbon dioxide appears to add carbon dioxide and not be neutral?
This is all without considering management of the crop and transport to refinery. You might have like emissions with any crop.
Additionally, we need be careful because the thermal input of choice for ethanol in the Dakotas is becoming coal instead of natural gas. Ethanol production is a new growth market for coal mines.
This article doesn't talk about how this idea theoretically works. I thought of similar idea of synthesizing hydrocarbon molecules directly from CO2 by bio-engineered bacteria, but soon I realized the free energy is positive for this reaction, which means additional energy must be involved. I don't know if they calculate free energy between their material and product. Maybe it's not economical. Though this idea is quite good in the carbon neutrality view.
You are right. Renewable petroleum is a bad idea because of its poor energy conversion efficiency.
Recall 30-40 years ago, oil was cheap. the Soviet Union made single cell protein from oil not from sugars. If you tried to do everything in reverse way, you should pay poor energy efficiency for the whole system.
Time will say that it is hoax. Butanol is much better than hydrocarbon. The better solution is to make hydrogen from sugars.
It will be the best solution considering energy efficiency, costs, environmental impacts, and technology challenges, etc.
I like know how can produce hydrogen from carbohydrate
joefargo: Ibelieve what you're getting at is there aint no free lunch, nor perpetual motion machines. Let's get the biomass out of the ground and into tanks, not deplete our dwindling aquifers, or pump tons of petrochems to grow it. Shorten the production chain, increase efficiency by pumping in waste CO2, say from a coal plant. As a FORMER "farmer", I found efficiency increased at least four-fold under controlled conditions, but I had to buy the Co2. I'm sure you catch my drift here, but I'm a carpenter, not an engineer. Check out Algaeatwork.com
Why not insert the genes into algae and let the sun be the feedstock?
Why not insert the genes into algae and let the sun be the feedstock?
Why don't we just pipe Al Gore up to a thermal heat exchanger? Lord knows he pumps out enough hot air...
If bacteria can excrete hydrocarbons, that is one more step towards getting rid of the Arab's strangelhold on our oil supply dependency.
Stop criticizing how this technology should work - according to your beliefs and get busy in your garage to create something better...
I like the idea of hydro-carbon producing bacteria since it means we won't have to build a new infrastructure for our cars' energy needs. However, if what it takes for this to shut the global warming cult worshipers up is the promise of "clean" fuel, here you go: If the bacteria can produce complex strings of hydrocarbons, that means they can (a) simply be re-engineered to produce H2 directly for fuel cell cars or (b) produce a hydrocarbon that hydrogen gas can be easily excreted from...as is the easiest way currently to obtain H2. For that matter, I don't see any reason why these two companies can't offer both. It wouldn't really cost anything much for them to produce some H2 on the side and it will shut some people up so I can pay less than five billion dollars to fill up a prius.
concrete for renewable petroleum
To produce renewable petroleum in big scale factory the material bio-resistant and impermeable with respect the working bacteria is necessary. I suggest using High-Energy Mixed (HEM) concrete I work with last 20 years.
Conventional concrete with pores and capillaries doesn't fit this purpose. Polymer concrete is denser, but is not bio-resistant. Only HEM concrete where pores and capillaries are filled with its own CSH gel non-permeable and bio-resistant. I use the same ingredients - cement, sand, water and high speed mixing. See www.hemconcrete.com.
Vladlen Fridman
vfrid38@comcast.net
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
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Chad
6 Comments
Greenhouse gas emissions?
This article mentions that there are no amounts of sulfur in the biofuel compared to standard petroleum and that it can make a biofuel with an energy output level comparitive to gasoline (versus corn ethanol's weak output - 30% less), but it doesn't describe how clean the fuel burns. Has this been described in any other articles about this technology or has that even been tested yet? Either way, the gallon/acre yield is phenomenal as compared to the yield from corn, its even theoretically huge in comparison to switchblade grass.
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cripdyke
52 Comments
Re: Greenhouse gas emissions?
greenhouse emissions would be neutral for the fuel created b/c the grass would grow b4 being processed and burned. However the energy of the process to turn switchgrass or another crop into fuel would not necessarily be offset. Eventually, however, this could be a cycle with the vehicles planting and harvesting and transporting the crop and fuel burning fuel from earlier crops. The effectively reduces the fuel per acre gained for the general economy, but makes the whole process carbon neutral and allows other energy that might be used for the processing [like wind generated electricity or some such] to be used for another purpose.
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seljo_myeri
2 Comments
Re: Greenhouse gas emissions?
CO2 is *NOT* a pollutant! See this NASA scientist's views on "global warming" and climate models from whence the idea comes.
http://www.weatherquestions.com/Roy-Spencer-on-global-warming.htm
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