Biofuels Breakthrough: Making Fuel From Air With Engineered Microbes
In what could be a major breakthrough, Joule Biotechnologies announced that it has directly produced fuel from the plentiful carbon dioxide in the air around us using highly engineered photosynthetic microbes.
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Inside specially designed reactors, Joule’s engineered microbes thrive off of sunlight and CO2. In return, depending on the type of organism, they can produce straight ethanol, diesel or a number of other types of hydrocarbons.
Although the process sounds similar to algae-produced biofuels, the Joule process is incredibly (and beneficially) different for several reasons:
- Doesn’t produce biomass
- No agricultural feedstock needed
- Can be conducted on non-arable land
- Doesn’t need fresh water
- Produces fuel directly without the need for extraction or refinement
Apparently Joule has discovered some unique genes inside these microbes that produce the enzymes responsible for directly making the molecules found in diesel. From there, engineering organisms to make other fuels was a simple step. At this point, production of the fuels has only been done in the lab, but Joule has plans to open a pilot plant in early 2011.
Source: Biofuels Digest
Image Credit: Joule Biotechnologies
Am I the only one who sees the terrible danger that this could present? What if these microbes get into the natural water supply? These microbes secrete hydrocarbons, and hydrocarbons are toxic to almost all life on Earth. If they get into the water supply they could kill of competing organisms and leave toxic hydrocarbon pollution in their wake. How could we stop them if they got into to water? Think “Andromeda Strain” here. This should never be allowed to move forward because it is inevitable that some of these organisms would eventually make it into the natural waters of our planet and cause a disaster of unimaginable dire consequences.
Think of the “GOLD” Alchemists= Joule
Or worst I agree with JW above (The FDA should take a very serious look at this ASAP =Its either Fraud or worse as outlined below.
Am I the only one who sees the terrible danger that this could present? What if these microbes get into the natural water supply? These microbes secrete hydrocarbons, and hydrocarbons are toxic to almost all life on Earth. If they get into the water supply they could kill of competing organisms and leave toxic hydrocarbon pollution in their wake. How could we stop them if they got into to water? Think “Andromeda Strain” here. This should never be allowed to move forward because it is inevitable that some of these organisms would eventually make it into the natural waters of our planet and cause a disaster of unimaginable dire consequences.
@SW –
A little alarmist, don’t you think? I would not be at all surprised if these microbes would get their tiny butts kicked out in the real world. If they were so much better at out-competing all other forms of life, then they would have turned up sometime over the past several billion years of evolution and none of us would be here today. I bet these things can only be coaxed into existing in a very specific environment.
what’s the bet SW works for an oil company?
Making Fuel From AIR. . .
Now that sounds like a wonderful thing to be doing, which won’t deplete other resources, and makes good use of something so seemingly plentiful !!!
The above scenario is bad, but what about the climate implications of limitless cheap hydrocarbon fuels to burn? Venus here we come.
“Can be conducted on non-arable land”
Where is there a huge amount of non-arable land? So much for breaking our dependence on the Middle East for our oil supplies…… :->
Or, from another viewpoint, I can see it now “Son, you’re gonna have to stop breathing, someone bought the mineral rights on that air in your lungs.”
Or yet another viewpoint - everyone will be required to get 3 hours of hard physical exercise each day to produce enough CO2 to generate enough ethanol to run Al Gore’s SUVs.
Sorry, I should drink coffee before commenting.
To John,
Life will find a way.
Not necessarily, John. The organisms we see today are not the inevitable end result of survival of the fittest. The fittest have survived, but it’s been an, arguably, chaotic and random journey.
So, perhaps, these sorts of microbes just haven’t existed in our current environment yet.
Either way, it doesn’t seem out of our reach to engineer the microbes to die in an outside environment.
Seriously? You guys think that other microbes aren’t in our water supply?
We deal with them just fine - chlorine.