Bacteria produce unlimited fuel

Originally posted by jimslyp69
I seem to remember an experiment in high school where a semi permeable sack was filled with glucose and starch solution and placed into a beaker full of water. After a given time, the water in the beaker was tested for starch and glucose. Only starch was present because the glucose could not pass through the membrane. Wouldn't these diesel like hydro carbons have the same problem passing back out through the cell membrane?

Glucose is a ring and the presence of oxygens makes it a much wider structure than chain molecules we're talking about. Since starch is made of chains of glucose molecules I'm wondering if you've described that experiment the right way round. I'd have expected the glucose to get through, but the starch not to.

Since they've got control over the genome of the bacteria, they can presumably influence the permeability of the cell membrane to the hydro-carbon. The main problem seems to be the homeopathic dilution in water.

Originally posted by DeepThought
I was thinking more of the amount of agricultural produce you have to shift to a factory to make the oil in the first place. Crude oil is a lot denser so you can transport more per vehicle to a refinery. Also by displacing food production in the area that the bio-fuel is being grown you force food to be transported in from outside.

As you probably k ...[text shortened]... a multiplier on the carbon intensity of whatever the activity the fuel is being imported for.

“...I was thinking more of the amount of agricultural produce you have to shift to a factory to make the oil in the first place. ...”

But we were not talking here about any sort of biofuels production but rather, specifically, this specific one that uses GM bacteria that directly produces diesel without the need for processing.

“....Crude oil is a lot denser so you can transport more per vehicle to a refinery. ….”

but if these GM bacteria bacteria do their job well then there would be no need to send biofuel to a refinery.

“....Also by displacing food production in the area that the biofuel is being grown you force food to be transported in from outside. ….”

but if these GM bacteria bacteria do their job well then the amount of land area needed would be less than 1% of the land we use for arable thus the amount of food production that would be displaced would be insignificant.

Originally posted by jimslyp69
I seem to remember an experiment in high school where a semi permeable sack was filled with glucose and starch solution and placed into a beaker full of water. After a given time, the water in the beaker was tested for starch and glucose. Only starch was present because the glucose could not pass through the membrane. Wouldn't these diesel like hydro carbons have the same problem passing back out through the cell membrane?

Very large molecules and even very large groups of molecules can go through a cell membrane all at once via what is called “Vesicle-mediated transport” that completely bypasses the pores in the membrane.

-scroll down to near the bottom of:
http://www.emc.maricopa.edu/faculty/farabee/biobk/biobooktransp.html
to find “Vesicle-mediated transport” .
-this link also gives a lot of good background info on transport though membranes.

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
“...I was thinking more of the amount of agricultural produce you have to shift to a factory to make the oil in the first place. ...”

But we were not talking here about any sort of biofuels production but rather, specifically, this specific one that uses GM bacteria that directly produces diesel without the need for processing.

“....Crude oil i ...[text shortened]... se for arable thus the amount of food production that would be displaced would be insignificant.

Yes, I didn't read the article until after I'd made the last comment. I've read it now. The main difficulty seems to be that your bio-diesel comes diluted in water in homeopathic concentrations. This may lead to the ruining carbon inputs I'm talking about.

I'd make the point that since this is a form of bio-solar energy, and most of our energy demands are for electricity, you're probably better off going for some solar panels instead as you avoid the efficiency problems of heat engines and the risks associated with GM organism release (although you'd think that a fuel emitting bacteria would be at enough of a selection disadvantage to be smothered by natures better adapted attempts anyway).

Technology is fine, but we should be looking more at reducing carbon by better insulation, better demographics - why do people live miles from where they work - and generally not burning as much fuel in the first place.

The problem is with a lot of this stuff, as you've noted in our discussion about organic farming, is that you start getting propaganda as soon as people can make a profit from their "environmental" product, and bury any information that indicates it may not be as good as it at first seems. I'm not convinced low energy bulbs are the way forward for example.

2 million acres is an area = 7700 square kilometers (88 km X 88 Km or 55 miles by 55 miles) so the land area isn't that big a deal, you could put that in Arizona and nobody would even notice.

However, I think there is going to be a multi-prong attack on this issue. For instance, here is a piece about the 'artificial leaf' using sunlight to produce H2 and O2 from water, much more efficiently than electrolysis:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110327191042.htm

And at the other end of the H2 stick:
more efficient fuel cells via nanocrystals:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110328093059.htm

I hear a lot of derision about H2 as a fuel but one thing it does not produce is
CO2, just water as the H2 and O2 are brought together in the fuel cell.

And on the H2 storage problem, new work is going on such as this:

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-01-hydrogen-storage-material-added-fuel.html

All this is just to show a lot of effort in many different areas are going on, not just bio-diesel fuels grown from fungi or bacteria.

Of course the result of that will be another kind of technology fight like the VHS Vs Beta 20 years ago or the DVD vs Blu ray of today, H2 V straight electric, charged at home, or Bio-diesel, vs hybrids of various kinds.

Every technology has its strong points and weak points, just look at Japan or Chernobyl or 3 mile island or the pride of the Soviet era, the dumping of excess submarine reactors in the Kara sea, dozens of them, that has to be one of the environmental highlights of all time. Here is a piece of a Wiki on that one:

Nuclear Dumping

There is concern about radioactive contamination from nuclear waste the former Soviet Union dumped in the sea and the effect this will have on the marine environment. According to an official "White Paper" report compiled and released by the Russian government in March 1993, the Soviet Union dumped six nuclear submarine reactors and ten nuclear reactors into the Kara Sea between 1965-1988.[4] Solid high- and low-level wastes unloaded from Northern Fleet nuclear submarines during reactor refuelings, were dumped in the Kara Sea, mainly in the shallow fjords of Novaya Zemlya, where the depths of the dumping sites range from 12 to 135 meters, and in the Novaya Zemlya Trough at depths of up to 380 meters. Liquid low-level wastes were released in the open Barents and Kara Seas. A subsequent appraisal by the International Atomic Energy Agency showed that releases are low and localized from the 16 naval reactors (reported by the IAEA as having come from seven submarines and the icebreaker "Lenin"😉 which were dumped at five sites in the Kara Sea. Most of the dumped reactors had suffered an accident.[5]

Here is another article on these releases:

http://www.barentsobserver.com/are-the-dumped-nuclear-reactors-leaking.4886486-116321.html

Originally posted by sonhouse
I hear a lot of derision about H2 as a fuel but one thing it does not produce is
CO2, just water as the H2 and O2 are brought together in the fuel cell.

But a bio fuel takes out of the air all CO2 that eventually goes back in. So it is, in total equally clean. The problem with current biofuels is they are often produced using fossil fuels.

It is my belief that the whole "hydrogen economy" thing was a deliberate push by US companies to delay the introduction of the electric car.

Originally posted by twhitehead
But a bio fuel takes out of the air all CO2 that eventually goes back in. So it is, in total equally clean. The problem with current biofuels is they are often produced using fossil fuels.

It is my belief that the whole "hydrogen economy" thing was a deliberate push by US companies to delay the introduction of the electric car.

I am not an advocate for H2 but it does have some advantages, assuming you can store enough H2 at low temps and such, you can refill at a 'gas' station, one made or converted to H2, so the infrastructure is more or less already in place. You have to have millions of high current lines on poles if you expect to recharge electrics in some reasonable time, with ideas such as replacing the entire battery at a station with a fully charged set.

I just see it as alternative energy storage/usage technologies. I wouldn't be surprised to see both technologies develop to usable levels. I don't see a conspiracy here.
The main problem with electric is, has been, and will be in the near future at least, battery capacity and cost. If you have to pay 15 kilobucks to replace a battery after say, 30,000 miles of driving it will never get off the ground.

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
http://www.alt-energy.info/biofuel/joule-unlimiteds-bacteria-secretes-diesel-fuel/


“.... The company is claiming that their bioreactors will be able to produce fuel on demand at a cost of about $30 per barrel of oil at a rate of about 15,000 gallons/acre/year. ….”

this sounds fantastic but I cannot wonder if this is too good to be true? For s ...[text shortened]... true? -I hope not although it does says that scaling up this technology will be "hard to do".

The fact that the article refers to a cyanobacteria producing "diesel fuel" is a scam to begin with. Cyanobacteria and other phototrophic organisms can produce lipids that can be processed into fuel similar to diesel, but no organism can produce "diesel fuel".

They are claiming 15,000 gallons/acre/year.
That is a wild exageration of what is actually possible for a phototrophic organism.
I just finished a project for a graduate class where I compared two strains of algae commonly used for biofuel research, I ended up with best case scenario of 692 gallons/acre/year and 768 gallons/acre/year for each different species based on specific growth rates and lipid production of each.

The numbers they are claiming are very exagerated.

Originally posted by mlprior
The fact that the article refers to a cyanobacteria producing "diesel fuel" is a scam to begin with. Cyanobacteria and other phototrophic organisms can produce lipids that can be processed into fuel similar to diesel, but no organism can produce "diesel fuel".

They are claiming 15,000 gallons/acre/year.
That is a wild exageration of what is actually pos ...[text shortened]... th rates and lipid production of each.

The numbers they are claiming are very exagerated.

“....The numbers they are claiming are very exaggerated. ...”

if that is true, I wonder if that makes the claim illegal? -anyone?
I am really not sure exactly what laws against commercial companies and researchers making exaggerated/false claims about their product/discovery/invention already exists but I would like a very serious major clampdown on any/all exaggerated/false claims in order to, as far as possible, put a stop to them so we are not left having to guess what is fact and what is fiction and we can at last trust any such claims -anyone else also would like this?

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
“....The numbers they are claiming are very exaggerated. ...”

if that is true, I wonder if that makes the claim illegal? -anyone?
I am really not sure exactly what laws against commercial companies and researchers making exaggerated/false claims about their product/discovery/invention already exists but I would like a very serious major clampdown ...[text shortened]... and what is fiction and we can at last trust any such claims -anyone else also would like this?

There is no legal action that you could take.

It is up to the editor of the journal to provide legitimate material for the readers. For reputable journals, a peer review process happens before anything is published. Basically, prospective articles are sent out to "experts" in the field to give feedback on the content. The article could be sent back to the author for revision or rejection if there are problems with the content.

H2 is not an energy source, it's an energy storage mechanism.