Originally posted by humy
I know this is going completely off-topic from this thread (none of us were talking about GM! ) but I agree with you here and would say that GM in the future will be highly beneficial to humanity not just because of nitrogen fixations but for many things in many different ways.

What the heck has steel vs. enzymes got to do with wind turbines?

Originally posted by googlefudge
So, staying on-topic.... Are you going to answer my epicly long clarifying post?

But my point, that you missed last time, is that the 'enzyme technology' is taking a huge
proportion of the surface of the planet to do what we can do in a few chemical plants with
current technology. This is OK in this case because we are fitting the technology in to what
is already in those areas, the crop plants we need for our food.
But this isn't the case for other applications. All our other nitrogen needs are still going to come
from the Haber Process. Because we don't have the land area to spare to make the nitrogen we
need using enzymes.

I don't understand where you are going with this: If we make a material, such as that used in solar panels, with the aid of artificial enzymes, I presume we would do so NOT using plants gown outside but rather it would be done inside a factory setting. Why would a factory that makes some chemical /material necessarily require more land area if it uses enzymes than if it doesn't? If no reason, why, then why is the land area used to fix nitrogen relevant to the issue of the use of enzymes used to do other things other than fix nitrogen?

Company A has 50 casts into which it pours the molten steel, which cools in 25 minutes and
then is reset, so each cast produces 1 frying pan per 30 minutes, for a total production of 100 per hour,
or 876,000 per year.

OK

Company B makes it's pans using enzymes, which slowly deposit the material down in an incredibly
thin layer in some sort of mould [or however it's supposed to work]. this process takes a month
[and I am being very generous here as I will explain later] and so each mould produces 12 pans
per year.

Why cannot company B simply use a greater NUMBER of moulds simultaneously so it makes 876,000 per year? They could be staked on top of each other so not take so much land area and the capital costs of making extra moulds could be more than offset in the longer run by the massive savings B makes in its manufacturing costs as a result of artificial enzymes.

And once B makes 876,000 per year, company A cannot hope to compete because B can sell the pans at a lower cost to its customers and yet still make a good profit. Then all the customers will only buy them from B because they are cheaper from B and then A will go bankrupt and thus stop producing them.

Assuming that you need 5 square meters of factory space per mould, the factory for company B has
a footprint of 365,000 square meters, or 1,460 times the 250 sqr meters needed for the factory of
company A.

Why? If the amount of land area used by B a significant problem, what is stopping B stacking them on top of each other to reduce that room to make it within an 'acceptable' land area? With designed enzymes, you could cheaply manufacture all the support structures needed to stack them perhaps ~50 high allowing one mould to safely go above another. With workarounds where really necessary, I completely fail to see why land area would likely be a huge issue. It isn't as if we haven got enough land for this! If land area really is such a massive issue, why not put the factories on land that currently has very low productivity such as remote mountainous regions of the earth or deserts? Admittedly that means more distance to transport the goods but that would probably be worth it if it means they can be produced 10,000 times cheaper thanks to enzymes!

I also question your assumption that using enzymes would necessarily make the process slower -it just depends on what is being made. If a soluble chemical, judging by the fast enzyme-driven chemical reactions found in nature, it could actually easily do the job faster! If a thin item such as a solar cell, because it is thin, the enzymes may be able to lay down all the layers in just ten days (because ultra-fast growing bone in nature can grow about that fast! ) . I believe it takes much longer than that to manufacture the substrate of a conventional solar chip and then turn it into a solar chip.
As for chunky thick 3D objects such as a brick; if that time taken is really a problem, there are workarounds that would allow it to be made much faster. For example, a brick (or a pan if you prefer ) might be made by first simultaneously making many thin layers of brick (each taking, say, only ten days to grow) and also chemicals to act like I kind of superglue to stick those thin layers together and then all those thin layers can be stuck together to make the whole final brick. This whole process may take no longer than 11 days instead of 11 months -problem solved!
But I bet there are much more complected and better workarounds that don't require much 'superglue' . I only gave the above as a crude simple example of a workaround just to prove that workarounds can exist. In fact, I see no reason why, with clever complicated arrangement, enzymes couldn't be designed and used to simultaneously chemically bond many different components of the final product together and with each component being a different shape. A whole car could be made in 10 days.

Originally posted by humy
[quote] But my point, that you missed last time, is that the 'enzyme technology' is taking a huge
proportion of the surface of the planet to do what we can do in a few chemical plants with
current technology. This is OK in this case because we are fitting the technology in to what
is already in those areas, the crop plants we need for our food.
But th ...[text shortened]... together and with each component being a different shape. A whole car could be made in 10 days.

Urgg.

the capital costs of making extra moulds could be more than offset in the longer run by the massive
savings B makes in its manufacturing costs as a result of artificial enzymes.

WHAT MASSIVE SAVINGS?????????


Please understand this, you are claiming massive economic savings with no evidence or reason
proposed that convinces me that these savings actually exist.

And more to the point, I carefully explained why I don't think the techniques you are proposing can
make these products in the first place. Let alone make them cheaper.

You can't just claim that these techniques will be cheaper. You have to explain to me precisely
how it is that these methods will A) work in the first place. and B) be cheaper than the alternative.


Because right now I don't accept either of those as being in any way demonstrated.

And without that NONE of your arguments mean anything.

Admittedly that means more distance to transport the goods but that would probably be worth it if it
means they can be produced 10,000 times cheaper thanks to enzymes!

Why is it 10,000 times cheaper??????

How can you possibly know how much cheaper, or even if it's cheaper, to use a technology that
has not been invented yet????

And as I keep saying, bone is a really bad example for you because bone has none of the properties
needed for the kind of materials I am talking about. It's porous, burns, weak to tensile or sheer stress,
hugely variable in composition, strength and shape... ect ect ect. We replace it with titanium alloy.


And I come back to this... It takes X amount of energy to break Nitrogen triple-bonds.
It takes X amount of energy to break the chemical bonds needed to make ceramics or metal alloys.
And that energy cost doesn't magically go away because you are doing it at low temperatures and
pressures with 'enzymes'. Doing it at lower temperatures and pressures just makes the process slower.


I'm not saying that we can't make things this way, medicines are a good example of products that would
benefit from this technology.

But you are claiming that this technology will revolutionise the way we make just about everything and that's
unsubstantiated nonsense.

Stop thinking of things you think are easy to do, and look at all the stuff that's going to be vastly harder
if not impossible to do.

You suggest making bricks in super thin layers and 'glueing' them together... you just replaced 10,000
brick moulds for 10,000 bricks, with 1,000,000 moulds for 10,000 bricks.
You added at least 100 extra steps in to the manufacturing process. It costs time, and money, and energy.

And you are not factoring in the energy cost of making and repairing and recycling all your enzymes which
are going to keep breaking and being hit by radiation...ect.


Explain IN DETAIL how this technology is going to be more energy efficient and 10,000 times cheaper
and I'll pay attention.

But you are just claiming benefits that arise by magic at the moment.

Originally posted by googlefudge
Urgg.

the capital costs of making extra moulds could be more than offset in the longer run by the massive
savings B makes in its manufacturing costs as a result of artificial enzymes.

WHAT MASSIVE SAVINGS?????????


Please understand this, you are claiming massive economic savings with no evidence or reason
proposed that con ...[text shortened]... and I'll pay attention.

But you are just claiming benefits that arise by magic at the moment.

Please understand this, you are claiming massive economic savings with no evidence or reason

enzymes can preform chemical reactions at room temperature and pressure thus avoid the huge energy costs creating massive extremes of temperature and pressure.

Why is it 10,000 times cheaper??????

see above + That obviously isn't meant as an exact figure.

And I come back to this... It takes X amount of energy to break Nitrogen triple-bonds.
It takes X amount of energy to break the chemical bonds needed to make ceramics or metal alloys.
And that energy cost doesn't magically go away because you are doing it at low temperatures and
pressures with 'enzymes'. Doing it at lower temperatures and pressures just makes the process slower.

Not necessarily slower. See previous post where I say “...If a soluble chemical, judging by the fast enzyme-driven chemical reactions found in nature, it could actually easily do the job faster! ...”
Yes or no? -enzyme-driven chemical reactions found in nature can happen extremely fast with each enzyme molecule making a reactant molecule many times a second?

http://www.chemguide.co.uk/organicprops/aminoacids/enzymes.html
“...and the carbonic anhydrase enzyme can do this sequence of reactions about a million times a second. ...”

Do you deny this biological fact? If not, how is a million times a second NOT 'fast'? This is evidence that it MUST be possible to make a chemical in less than ONE SECOND by mixing some reactants with just a bit of enzyme (whether it is artificially designed for the particular task or not) and at room temperature and pressure -NATURE is the PROOF!
And if enzymes can do that, GIVEN that many industrial chemical reactions take much much longer than that, WHY MUST it necessarily be always slower to make such chemicals with enzymes regardless of what is being made? -please explain...

And what about the huge energy savings in not creating those extremes of temperature and pressure? WHY do you disregard that?
Typically (it depends, and there may be exceptions ) , the vast bulk of the energy that goes into conventional manufacturing ( i.e. without enzymes ) does NOT go into making and breaking chemical bond but rather goes into producing the extreme temperature and pressures required to make the making and breaking of those chemical bonds possible using the conventional manufacturing. If that wasn't true and also most of the energy went into creating and breaking of chemical bonds, there would be little waste heat and conventional manufacturing would be nearly 100% energy efficient! I hope you can see this is usually extremely far from the case! I would guess that often MUCH less than one joule out of 10,000 joules going into a conventional manufacturing method actually helps break and make the chemical bonds thus this is where I pulled the "10,000" figure from. An example of this would be the manufacture of those tiny thin microchips -how much of all that VAST amount of energy that goes into the furnaces etc to make that tiny chip actually goes into directly making and breaking the chemical bonds that NEED to be made to make that tiny microchip? Think about it! SURELY it must be a MINUTE proportion! it MUST be EXTREMELY energy inefficient! Now think of the huge savings that could be made if no furnaces and other massive energy wasters where needed to make that microchip? -I hope you can see what I mean here.

Originally posted by humy
enzymes can preform chemical reactions at room temperature and pressure thus avoid the huge energy costs creating massive extremes of temperature and pressure.

I haven't followed the thread, so forgive me if this has already been asked. What percentage of the cost of manufacturing is currently spent on energy for heating alone?
Surely one immediate solution is to use heat exchangers to conserve the heat and thus reduce costs?
But I am not convinced that the heating requirement is as big a proportion of the costs as you seem to think.

Originally posted by twhitehead

I haven't followed the thread, so forgive me if this has already been asked. What percentage of the cost of manufacturing is currently spent on energy for heating alone?

That depends on the process but it can easily be 99.99%

Surely one immediate solution is to use heat exchangers to conserve the heat and thus reduce costs?

I would say that is always a very good idea and one that is already sometimes exploited but there is often practical limits on how much energy can be recycled that way and there is still an awful lot of waste that could be cut out completely if no temperature extreme was necessary.

But I am not convinced that the heating requirement is as big a proportion of the costs as you seem to think

It depends. see my previous quote:

“...An example of this would be the manufacture of those tiny thin microchips -how much of all that VAST amount of energy that goes into the furnaces etc to make that tiny chip actually goes into directly making and breaking the chemical bonds that NEED to be made to make that tiny microchip? Think about it! SURELY it must be a MINUTE proportion! it MUST be EXTREMELY energy inefficient! Now think of the huge savings that could be made if no furnaces and other massive energy wasters where needed to make that microchip? -I hope you can see what I mean here. ...”

Originally posted by twhitehead
I haven't followed the thread, so forgive me if this has already been asked. What percentage of the cost of manufacturing is currently spent on energy for heating alone?
Surely one immediate solution is to use heat exchangers to conserve the heat and thus reduce costs?
But I am not convinced that the heating requirement is as big a proportion of the costs as you seem to think.

Yeah. I don't seem to be able to make this point.

Most manufacturing requires chemical reactions that take X amount of energy.

Doing the reactions at lower temps/pressures makes it take longer, if
it still happens at all.
So you use less energy per unit time, but take more time.

Now using a catalyst [which is the supposed function of these enzymes] can make
the reaction take less energy, but we are talking about a % reduction in cost,
like say 20%. We are not talking about hundred or thousand fold increases
in efficiency. This means that [for example] a catalytic converter can run at
100 C instead of 150 C and do the same job.

But that converter uses robust solid metallic catalysts [like platinum].

Humy wants to use enzymes, which are very fragile, and require lots of energy to
make, frequently wear out and have to be replaced, and are very vulnerable to
thermal or mechanical shock to be not only a catalyst for all our currently high energy
chemical reactions [like making ceramics ffs] but he wants them to assemble the
final product as well, so that it literally grows like a living organism.

And he's claiming that this will be so much cheaper and more reliable that we will move
all [or almost all] of our future manufacturing to this technology.


And I still can't see how that's possible, let alone economical.


The big energy cost of my lead example, The Haber Process, is the energy cost of breaking
nitrogen triple bonds. I have yet to see how using enzymes magically fixes that problem.

And I still don't see how we are going to get enzymes to build stuff on demand that doesn't
look like biology. If you want stuff that looks like biology then great.

My Frying Pan doesn't look like biology.

Neither does my Nuclear Submarine.

Originally posted by humy

Please understand this, you are claiming massive economic savings with no evidence or reason

enzymes can preform chemical reactions at room temperature and pressure thus avoid the huge energy costs creating massive extremes of temperature and pressure.

Why is it 10,000 times cheaper??????

see above + That obviou ...[text shortened]... assive energy wasters where needed to make that microchip? -I hope you can see what I mean here.

http://www.chemguide.co.uk/organicprops/aminoacids/enzymes.html
“...and the carbonic anhydrase enzyme can do this sequence of reactions about a million times a second. ...”

You are making organic compounds. Which don't require making the kind of hardened
structures of a ceramic or metal alloy.

I am talking about building stuff like nuclear submarines which require multi-foot-thick super
strong micrometer tolerance Hulls made out of Titanium Alloy or equivalent.

You respond by saying biology can make bone.

Bone doesn't cut it, bone isn't in the ballpark of something that cuts it.


I don't deny, and haven't denied that enzymes can't be really useful in making certain
products, like medicines or for manufacturing [certain] chemicals.


What I don't accept as being currently justifiable is your bigger claim that we can build everything
with enzymes.

And not just the base materials but actually have them assembled by 'enzymes'.

It's your claim that we will stop using all current manufacturing methods and stop using metallic
objects because we will be able to make alternatives with enzymes cheaper and better that
I am challenging.

You need to stop trying to prove that enzymes can help in some applications.

And prove that they are superior in all applications to substantiate your claim.

Originally posted by googlefudge

http://www.chemguide.co.uk/organicprops/aminoacids/enzymes.html
“...and the carbonic anhydrase enzyme can do this sequence of reactions about a million times a second. ...”

You are making organic compounds. Which don't require making the kind of hardened
structures of a ceramic or metal alloy.

I am talking about building stuff li ...[text shortened]... pplications.

And prove that they are superior in all applications to substantiate your claim.

You are making organic compounds. Which don't require making the kind of hardened
structures of a ceramic or metal alloy.

the principle ingredient of bone in nature is calcium carbonate which is BOTH NOT organic compound AND does NOT require that kind of hardening thus proof enzymes CAN make ceramic (or ceramic-like ) material without any need for extremes of temperature.

Note that I am not implying that calcium carbonate would be the best material for this because I think it probably wouldn't be and I am only using it as an example.

Bone doesn't cut it, bone isn't in the ballpark of something that cuts it.

Are you taking here about natural bone or a hypothetical bone-like material artificially designed for the job? If the latter, WHY can't it “cut it”? Are you aware that, weight-to-weight, bone is ~5 times stronger than steel! surely that indicates bone (or bone-like material ) would be BETTER for many applications than steel and most alloys (except perhaps some applications requiring good heat/electric conductivity but even there, there are workarounds. For example, you could use silicon carbide where good heat conductivity is required )

Originally posted by humy
That depends on the process but it can easily be 99.99%

Can you give any concrete examples?
I believe aluminium smelting is an energy intensive process, and for this reason it gets shipped to iceland where energy is cheap. I have not heard of other manufacturing doing this.
At 99.9% it would be well worth doing. Zambia is another alternative as our power is cheap - the problem is it is unreliable, but I am sure something could be done about that.

Originally posted by twhitehead
Can you give any concrete examples?
I believe aluminium smelting is an energy intensive process, and for this reason it gets shipped to iceland where energy is cheap. I have not heard of other manufacturing doing this.
At 99.9% it would be well worth doing. Zambia is another alternative as our power is cheap - the problem is it is unreliable, but I am sure something could be done about that.

Can you give any concrete examples?

1, Manufacture of a microchip.

2, Manufacture of steel from iron ore.

In terms of energy efficiency as a percentage, both are ludicrous energy wasters.

Originally posted by humy

You are making organic compounds. Which don't require making the kind of hardened
structures of a ceramic or metal alloy.

the principle ingredient of bone in nature is calcium carbonate which is BOTH NOT organic compound AND does NOT require that kind of hardening thus proof enzymes CAN make ceramic (or ceramic-like ) material without ...[text shortened]... rkarounds. For example, you could use silicon carbide where good heat conductivity is required )

Bone has good compressive strength.

It has really lousy tensile and shearing strength.

Look take a look at turbine blades in jet engines.

Rolls-Royce has a proprietary method of making the main turbine blades out
of a single crystal of tungsten [or tungsten alloy probably] because they are
under so much stress that the joints between crystals in normal metal would
become weak points that would cause fractures and the blade to disintegrate.

You are claiming to be able to get a bunch of enzymes to get together and
make something as perfect as a single tungsten crystal turbine blade.

HOW????

You can't tell me because the technology to do that, or anything like that, has
not been invented.

We do not know IF it is possible.

Let alone whether it's more economic.

The haphazard deposits of calcium in bone are what I expect this technology to
produce. MAYBE it's possible to make an equivalent to the thick titanium alloy of
a deep sea submarines hull, using enzymes.
But that is a big IF.
And it's followed by an even bigger IF when you ask if that as yet unknown process will
be better and cheaper than more conventional technology.



You gave an example of computer chips earlier as an example of something you thought
could be made much much more efficiently with enzymes than it is currently.

To which I answer that there are two parts to the cost.

The cost of making super thin super high quality silicone wafers.

And the cost of etching super highly organised processors onto them.

I don't think you can program enzymes to make either.

But the energy cost of doing so is going to be way way higher than what you are allowing
for because you have made the cardinal sin of forgetting the second law of thermodynamics.

Taking a bunch of precursor chemicals and sticking them together to make a bunch of
product chemicals all suspended in solution is one thing.

Making a super highly precise high information content microprocessor is something else.

If you are creating that much order then there is an energy bill coming your way as a result.

It takes energy to organise your enzymes to make a coherent product as opposed to random
deposits all over the place [aka bone].

The higher quality the product [in terms of low entropy state] then the higher the energy cost
and it doesn't matter how you try to do it.

Originally posted by humy

Can you give any concrete examples?

1, Manufacture of a microchip.

2, Manufacture of steel from iron ore.

In terms of energy efficiency as a percentage, both are ludicrous energy wasters.

See above. 2nd law violation.


EDIT: also you are not factoring the costs with designing your designer enzymes. the
decades upon decades and millions of man-hours and billions~trillions of $ in research
required to invent these enzymes in the first place.

And you are still not factoring in the costs of making and repairing these enzymes in
your estimates.

Originally posted by humy

You are making organic compounds. Which don't require making the kind of hardened
structures of a ceramic or metal alloy.

the principle ingredient of bone in nature is calcium carbonate which is BOTH NOT organic compound AND does NOT require that kind of hardening thus proof enzymes CAN make ceramic (or ceramic-like ) material without ...[text shortened]... rkarounds. For example, you could use silicon carbide where good heat conductivity is required )

... you could use silicon carbide ...

There are a whole bunch of really super-strong ceramics and alloys and composites.

I don't know how you make any of them, let alone make them cheaper, using enzymes.

I don't know where you get the idea that I believe that steel is some unlettered*** wonder material.

My point is and always has been that you are claiming to replace it with super cheap better
replacements made using enzymes....

And I don't think you CAN make these alternatives cheaper [or at all] with enzymes.

Claiming you can over and over again doesn't get us anywhere.


***I no-longer have any idea what word I intended to use here... But it certainly wasn't
'unlettered'!???

I blame auto-correct.

Originally posted by humy
1, Manufacture of a microchip.

99.9% of the cost of microchip manufacture is energy? I doubt that.
References?

2, Manufacture of steel from iron ore.
Smelting, I realize is very energy intensive. However, heat is not the only energy requirement. There is transportation, and crushing as well. And I am not convinced that enzymes would make as significant difference as you seem to think. You would have to crush the rock first, soak it in the enzyme -which would do what? Dissolve the iron in solution? What next?