Posted on 01/18/2011 7:27:49 PM PST by SCPatriot77
In September, a privately held and highly secretive U.S. biotech company named Joule Unlimited received a patent for “a proprietary organism” – a genetically adapted E. coli bacterium – that feeds solely on carbon dioxide and excretes liquid hydrocarbons: diesel fuel, jet fuel and gasoline. This breakthrough technology, the company says, will deliver renewable supplies of liquid fossil fuel almost anywhere on Earth, in essentially unlimited quantity and at an energy-cost equivalent of $30 (U.S.) a barrel of crude oil. It will deliver, the company says, “fossil fuels on demand.”
. . .
Joule says it now has “a library” of fossil-fuel organisms at work in its Massachusetts labs, each engineered to produce a different fuel. It has “proven the process,” has produced ethanol (for example) at a rate equivalent to 10,000 U.S. gallons an acre a year. It anticipates that this yield could hit 25,000 gallons an acre a year when scaled for commercial production, equivalent to roughly 800 barrels of crude an acre a year.
(Excerpt) Read more at theglobeandmail.com ...
This makes nooo sense. Where does the E.coli get the energy to bump CO2 up to a hydrocarbon? E.Coli lives on crap, it isn’t a photosynthesizer. I guess the energy just poops itself into existence.
We import what? OVER A million barrels A DAY?.....
We would need the entire state of Texas to grow our own fuel.....
Is this the same company that came up with a cold fusion sustained reaction?
Reminds me of the joke
Guy runs in the room “I got good news and I got bad news”
The others ask “Well, whats the bad news?”
“The Martians have landed in Denver”
“So whats the bad news?”
“The Martians are eating (fill in the blank) and pissing gasoline”
Does this mean the new microbes are from Mars????
The engine on the bus goes poop poop poop
I did a quick back of the envelope calculation a while back. If the entire annual output of palm oil from Malaysia and Indonesia were converted to motor fuel, it would supply domestic US automobile demand for just about three weeks. And that’s coming from countries blessed with optimal growing conditions, and grows the stuff like its going out of style.
And we get mutant E. Coli! Woohoo!
By my (quite possibly messed up) calculations, this means we could replace our present consumption of oil (roughly 7B barrels) by converting about 13000 square miles to production with this process, or about 20% more area than the state of Maryland.
That's quite a significant footprint. Since I assume this requires tanks, that's also quite a lot of infrastructure investment.
“Where does the E.coli get the energy to bump CO2 up to a hydrocarbon?”
Sunlight, of course.
The limiting resource in the process is probably water.
What could possibly go wrong?
If true, it’s the worst thing that could ever happen to the warmist crowd. Although I’ll only believe it when I see it.
One is forced to ask... where does the hydrogen part of "hydrocarbons" come from?
Exactly!
It seems like a perfect cycle complete with mutant E. Coli.
If they opened up exploration tomorrow the economy would be fixed pretty quickly. Just opening up access to shale oil would do that. But we won't. Why not? Because we have morons in Washington and Obama is working hard to destroy America.
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=7,794,969.PN.&OS=PN/7,794,969&RS=PN/7,794,969
The first rule of PIMPING your IPO....File a B**S**T Patent.
Am I the only one that wonders...What if this thing gets loose?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.