Mass. company making diesel with sun, water, CO2
"A Massachusetts biotechnology company says it can produce the fuel that runs Jaguars and jet engines using the same ingredients that make grass grow.
Joule Unlimited has invented a genetically-engineered organism that it says simply secretes diesel fuel or ethanol wherever it finds sunlight, water and carbon dioxide."
more at the link...
But in a word...WOW. Think about if we could make our own diesel. No more middle east dependence. We could tell so many influencing entities to get bent.
As a guy who used to modify bacteria and yeast for a living the claims are extremely over the top. Unless they have somehow overcome the density/OD/light penetration/ water sourcing/nutrient problems.
I forget who did the math but some said that we would have to flood the entire death valley with 2 inches of water to produce enough fuel for just the private passenger fleet in the US
The article is convincing enough that at least the technology is moving in the right direction. I liked this line: "Robertson talks wistfully about the day he'll hop into the Ferrari he doesn't have, fill it with Joule fuel and gun the engine in an undeniable demonstration of the power and reality of Joule's ideas"
I really think though, that petroleum based fuels are on the way out, and hydrogen fuels are on the way in. Just my gut feeling. I have no facts to back that.
Honestly I think the future will probably be a mix of fuels. That seems to make the most sense to me.
wearymicrobe wrote:
I forget who did the math but some said that we would have to flood the entire death valley with 2 inches of water to produce enough fuel for just the private passenger fleet in the US
Frankly, I don't have a problem with that!
NOHOME
Reader
3/1/11 11:51 a.m.
1988RedT2 wrote:
wearymicrobe wrote:
I forget who did the math but some said that we would have to flood the entire death valley with 2 inches of water to produce enough fuel for just the private passenger fleet in the US
Frankly, I don't have a problem with that!
The production has to go somewhere!
I have been aware of variations on this technology for some time. The part I never figured out was which ocean we were going to convert to fuel production. We talking salt water or fresh water? Cause I don't know how to break it to you motor-heads, but fresh water is going to be a bigger issue than fuel in the next 100 years.
I thought this would be the algae. I don't see how you could produce enough oil on the large scale using algae. How much algae do you have to process to get a barrel of oil? I guess technically anything is possible though. The deal with creating fossil fuels is it is incredibly energy intensive to take CO2 from the air and turn it into a liquid fuel as you are fighting entropy. One of my college profs said the biggest issue with burning up all the oil reserves is you are loosing the long chain hydrocarbons which you can turn into other chemicals and are very hard to synthesize. Instead we end up burning these large HC molecules and once they are turned into CO2 they are gone.
There is a company here in the Bay Area call Live fuels. There idea is to take little tiny fish into the "dead zone" in the gulf of mexico. These little fish eat the algae then, you take the fish and press them into oil. Seem to be a ridiculous idea but the government must be funding it.
Here in the Bay Area the utilities are taking a step in the right direction by using "smart" meter to monitor electricity usage throughout the day. Well the cookes in Berk and other places started asking about the "safety" concerns of the high frequency radio waves. I love seeing these silly people talk about a subject which they obviously have no knowledge, the women are worried about their poor childrens health. With so many forms of energy buzzing through the air I cannot see stressing the smart meters.
benzbaron wrote:
Seem to be a ridiculous idea but the government must be funding it.
I'm pretty sure that "ridiculous" is a prerequisite for government funding.
