The Ethanol Lobby Isn't Going To Like This, Yogi

[billroper]

Via Instapundit, here's an article about an outfit that thinks they've got a process where microorganisms eat sunlight and CO2 and produce ethanol and hydrocarbons as waste products. As observed, the trick is to figure out how to scale up the process, but apparently -- if it does scale! -- you could satisfy the U.S. appetite for liquid fuel with an area the size of the Texas panhandle.

That's a substantial improvement on current techniques. And you can do it in areas where you can't grow food.

I rather dislike burning food.

Which reminds me that it's time to go fire up the grill and put the steaks on. :)

Comments

[kestrels-nest.livejournal.com]

Way cool! I generally disapprove of burning food myself.

[drzarron.livejournal.com]

It also sounds like this process will use a lot less energy to get the end product than processing it from corn. I like being able to "grow" our own fuel, be nice to be able to do without losing ground or just breaking even.

[robin-june.livejournal.com]

I approve. Having driven behind both kinds of diesel busses, Petroleum (http://www.cota.com/) and biodiesel (http://tp.osu.edu/cabs/index.shtml), I can affirm that anything that lowers the stinky sulfur levels down from those of petroleum exhaust makes for much nicer travel.

[archiver-tim.livejournal.com]

Didn't Lou & Peter Barryman have something in a song about the creatures that spew gasoline missing The Ark?

[mia-mcdavid.livejournal.com]

Cool. I'm with you that burning food can't be a good answer.

BTW, would you check in here, please? http://mia-mcdavid.livejournal.com/170704.html

You might have an insight...

[bedlamhouse]

I like farmers being able to sell their crops for enough that land becomes valuable as farmland again instead of bulldozed housing developments, and that people start cutting out the middleman for the food part and end up with cheaper prices while the farmers still get more income, but that's me, I guess.

In the main, though, anything that gives us renewable fuel inside the boundaries of the country is a Good Thing.

[bedlamhouse]

You do know that the canonical "study saying biofuel is a net negative energy proposition" is nearly 3 decades out of date, right?

[samwinolj.livejournal.com]

Not good. No process that fails to put tax dollars in the pockets of Archer Daniels Midland is ecologically sound. Are you certain that there is no way to involve corn in the process?

Taking off my libertarian paranoid hat for a moment, this is excellent news. I wonder if it would work even better if the CO2 were more concentrated--say from a steel mill's or power plant's exhaust. If we can't eliminate the extra CO2 entirely, maybe we could make it do double-duty.

[billroper]

I think the article mentions siting power plants nearby to provide concentrated CO2. So it becomes a closed carbon loop, which is just fine. :)

[msminlr.livejournal.com]

ADM doesn't just grow corn, though, so there IS precedent for them to move into *this* economic niche also...

[kizoku42.livejournal.com]

They're -both- bio-fuel and -both- ethanol. It's jacking up the price of corn that's stupid. Besides, growing corn to produce ethanol -is- a net loss even if not all bio-fuel is. The people pushing the subsidy are reduced to claiming that it will get the infrastructure in place to use ethanol when a better source comes along. Which may actually be true but I'm glad the better sources are coming along.

[daddy-guido.livejournal.com]

They've been playing with this for a number of years - aside from the limitations of needing a CO2 source and the high initial build cost, the last time i looked at this, there was an issue with the algae mutating after a very short period of time, requiring constant replacement.

As I recall, that was the major deal-breaker for the company trying to scale this up in Australia.