This actually has important implications for space settlement since oil is a valuable resource for plastics, drugs, agricultural chemicals and is of course a very concentrated source of energy. Being able to easily and economically produce it from biological sources means its one less item they will be dependent on Earth for.
Tom
Interesting, but one of the things you need to worry about is mineral balance. You can’t just keep on growing stuff and turning it all into biofuel or you will destroy the soil. Back when I worked for an oil major I once read an article in one of the internal magazines written by someone who was deeply involved with biofuels. One of the main problems is that there isn’t enough arable land to provide all or even most of our energy needs. You could also consider hydroponics, vast algae reactors in the oceans etc.
One interesting point amid all the talk of a hydrogen economy is that hydrocarbons could remain a very important carrier of energy even if we switched to a different source of energy. Given enough energy (fission, fusion) you could produce oil from CO2 by a similar process to that considered for Mars ISRU. The benefit of that would be that we wouldn’t have to switch all of our infrastructure from hydrocarbons to hydrogen.
Bacteria that make oil would be carbon neutral and if large enough populations were created we could pump excess bio-petroleum down into old coal mines were it deemed desirable to reduce CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.
A dial-a-CO2-level capability
Also, those bacteria tanks wouldn’t be controlled by nut-job dictators.
I agree with Rand. Faster, please.
You can’t just keep on growing stuff and turning it all into biofuel or you will destroy the soil.
This is a solved problem through fertilizer, crop rotation, and even letting the land go fallow. For example, if I grow a nitrogen-fixing legume like alfalfa and plow it in at the end of the season, then I replenish the soil.
But it’s worth noting that we’re speaking of oil-producing bacteria. These aren’t grown by traditional farming methods. They won’t exhaust soil, for example.
They do need biomass which has to come from somewhere. Great if you have biomass you weren’t doing anything with, but only a drop in the ocean. If the solar/nuclear algae thing works out combining the two ideas could be great.
“All these ventures are aiming to get biofuel products on the market in the next few years. But which company will be the first? Which will be the best? ”
So if you let the free market look for solutions they will find them and in turn weed out the less effecient without any government oversight. Impossible!!!
Barrak
Bacteria that make oil would be carbon neutral
How does that work? The Bacteria breaks down plants. Plants, when living, scrub CO2 from the air and produce O2. The Bacteria takes the carbon from plants to make hydrocarbon oil. I guess if that oil just sits there, the only damage done is the lost of a plant to scrub the air, and I assume if the plant was already dead, that’s ok.
But if the oil is burned, wouldn’t it produce CO2? That’s carbon neutral how? I’m just trying to figure out this complex science of global warming and carbon trading. Is it because bacteria making oil is good (carbon neutral), so long as Halliburton isn’t making money selling drilling equipment?
Oil drilling and coal mining and combustion returns to the atmosphere dead dinosaur carbon that was sequestered underground millions of years ago.
The carbon in bio-oil comes from today’s atmosphere (perhaps there is a short lag if the oil producing microbes are fed plant matter, but we are talking months not millenia) and when bio-oil is burned that carbon returns to the atmosphere. Carbon neutral
If surplus bio-oil were pumped underground, that would be carbon negative as it would sequester carbon.
If Halliburton wants to gene modify microbes and sell bio-oil, God Bless ’em — I’ll cheer.
They do need biomass which has to come from somewhere.
UItimately, that biomass comes from air with some mineral inputs (particularly, phosphorus and sulfur).
Ugh, I messed this post up.
They do need biomass which has to come from somewhere.
Ultimately, that biomass comes from air (which could be replaced with some other carbon source) with some mineral inputs (particularly, phosphorus and sulfur). Why not use algae as your biomass input?
Yes, algae + this bacterium could be an awesome combination.
I don’t understand why you treat only this one bioengineered strain as dangerous. There are hundreds of E. coli strains producing different type of proteins and doing various biochemical reactions. None of them have caused a major problem yet, especially that they cant’t proliferate in open environment like lakes, rivers or soil. They prefer warmer plases like your intestines. If anyone should not respect hygene protocols and let deadly bacteria into their system,
This has some promise. We need to engineer/breed something that can live on land/shallow salt water pools that we can’t use to farm food. We may be able to set up (if solar energy ends up being the driver), some sort of oceanic farm for this stuff out in the desert regions of the ocean – giving us (maybe – I’d have to do the math) the surface area needed to actually collect enough of the energy.
If they ever figure out how to give a bacterium energy with some sort of direct input of electric current, that would enable us to significantly shrink the whole operation down, and operate it with nuke plants.
I actually agree with Martijn’s comment who said “You can’t just keep on growing stuff and turning it all into biofuel or you will destroy the soil.”
It’s true, at some point enough is enough. We can’t just treat everything on earth as if belonging to us. It’s not. We belong to the earth and not the other way around. Just read Ishmael, I think it’s quite an enlightening read.
George
Hi All,
This actually has important implications for space settlement since oil is a valuable resource for plastics, drugs, agricultural chemicals and is of course a very concentrated source of energy. Being able to easily and economically produce it from biological sources means its one less item they will be dependent on Earth for.
Tom
Interesting, but one of the things you need to worry about is mineral balance. You can’t just keep on growing stuff and turning it all into biofuel or you will destroy the soil. Back when I worked for an oil major I once read an article in one of the internal magazines written by someone who was deeply involved with biofuels. One of the main problems is that there isn’t enough arable land to provide all or even most of our energy needs. You could also consider hydroponics, vast algae reactors in the oceans etc.
One interesting point amid all the talk of a hydrogen economy is that hydrocarbons could remain a very important carrier of energy even if we switched to a different source of energy. Given enough energy (fission, fusion) you could produce oil from CO2 by a similar process to that considered for Mars ISRU. The benefit of that would be that we wouldn’t have to switch all of our infrastructure from hydrocarbons to hydrogen.
Bacteria that make oil would be carbon neutral and if large enough populations were created we could pump excess bio-petroleum down into old coal mines were it deemed desirable to reduce CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.
A dial-a-CO2-level capability
Also, those bacteria tanks wouldn’t be controlled by nut-job dictators.
I agree with Rand. Faster, please.
You can’t just keep on growing stuff and turning it all into biofuel or you will destroy the soil.
This is a solved problem through fertilizer, crop rotation, and even letting the land go fallow. For example, if I grow a nitrogen-fixing legume like alfalfa and plow it in at the end of the season, then I replenish the soil.
But it’s worth noting that we’re speaking of oil-producing bacteria. These aren’t grown by traditional farming methods. They won’t exhaust soil, for example.
They do need biomass which has to come from somewhere. Great if you have biomass you weren’t doing anything with, but only a drop in the ocean. If the solar/nuclear algae thing works out combining the two ideas could be great.
“All these ventures are aiming to get biofuel products on the market in the next few years. But which company will be the first? Which will be the best? ”
So if you let the free market look for solutions they will find them and in turn weed out the less effecient without any government oversight. Impossible!!!
Barrak
Bacteria that make oil would be carbon neutral
How does that work? The Bacteria breaks down plants. Plants, when living, scrub CO2 from the air and produce O2. The Bacteria takes the carbon from plants to make hydrocarbon oil. I guess if that oil just sits there, the only damage done is the lost of a plant to scrub the air, and I assume if the plant was already dead, that’s ok.
But if the oil is burned, wouldn’t it produce CO2? That’s carbon neutral how? I’m just trying to figure out this complex science of global warming and carbon trading. Is it because bacteria making oil is good (carbon neutral), so long as Halliburton isn’t making money selling drilling equipment?
Oil drilling and coal mining and combustion returns to the atmosphere dead dinosaur carbon that was sequestered underground millions of years ago.
The carbon in bio-oil comes from today’s atmosphere (perhaps there is a short lag if the oil producing microbes are fed plant matter, but we are talking months not millenia) and when bio-oil is burned that carbon returns to the atmosphere. Carbon neutral
If surplus bio-oil were pumped underground, that would be carbon negative as it would sequester carbon.
If Halliburton wants to gene modify microbes and sell bio-oil, God Bless ’em — I’ll cheer.
They do need biomass which has to come from somewhere.
UItimately, that biomass comes from air with some mineral inputs (particularly, phosphorus and sulfur).
Ugh, I messed this post up.
They do need biomass which has to come from somewhere.
Ultimately, that biomass comes from air (which could be replaced with some other carbon source) with some mineral inputs (particularly, phosphorus and sulfur). Why not use algae as your biomass input?
Yes, algae + this bacterium could be an awesome combination.
I don’t understand why you treat only this one bioengineered strain as dangerous. There are hundreds of E. coli strains producing different type of proteins and doing various biochemical reactions. None of them have caused a major problem yet, especially that they cant’t proliferate in open environment like lakes, rivers or soil. They prefer warmer plases like your intestines. If anyone should not respect hygene protocols and let deadly bacteria into their system,
This has some promise. We need to engineer/breed something that can live on land/shallow salt water pools that we can’t use to farm food. We may be able to set up (if solar energy ends up being the driver), some sort of oceanic farm for this stuff out in the desert regions of the ocean – giving us (maybe – I’d have to do the math) the surface area needed to actually collect enough of the energy.
If they ever figure out how to give a bacterium energy with some sort of direct input of electric current, that would enable us to significantly shrink the whole operation down, and operate it with nuke plants.
I actually agree with Martijn’s comment who said “You can’t just keep on growing stuff and turning it all into biofuel or you will destroy the soil.”
It’s true, at some point enough is enough. We can’t just treat everything on earth as if belonging to us. It’s not. We belong to the earth and not the other way around. Just read Ishmael, I think it’s quite an enlightening read.
George