Synthetic Biology For Natural Fuel

CoolBeans writes "Making ethanol is easy. Making enough ethanol to fill every gas tank in a developed country is tricky. The Department of Energy has promised $125 million to the Joint BioEnergy Institute, a team of six national labs and universities that will be run like a startup company. They intend to create new life forms that are optimized for alcohol production. The genes of crops that produce large amounts of cellulose will be tweaked to improve the yield per acre and to increase drought and pest resistance. Microbes that produce sugar from cellulose and ethanol from sugar will be built for speed and efficiency." The article mentions as an aside that earlier this year, "the energy giant BP gave $500 million to Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley lab, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for similar alternative energy research. That gift will fund the Energy Biosciences Institute, which will operate separately from the JBEI." So UC Berkeley and LBL are both participating in two separate energy-biotech research programs.

More information

[RobinH]

There's a company in Ottawa that's working on cellulose ethanol as well. The company is Iogen Corporation [iogen.ca]. They have information on the process [iogen.ca] too. I first heard about them when I was at a Master Brewers Association of the Americas event, and there was a guest speaker from Iogen who talked about the similarities between ethanol production and brewing (i.e. some of the industry knowledge is transferrable).

theres more too

[Anonymous Coward]

They also have a patent on an organism that makes ethanol and acetic acid from watergas [CO,H2 and CO2] which can more easily be synthesized without using plants to make the biomass required for normal ethanol production. ethanol is normally biosynthesized by converting glucose=>pyruvate=>ethanol which allows for making 2 ethanol molecules for every glucose used. the glucose is the big problem with ethanol production from biomass. plants are efficient at converting light energy into an immediate source of energy but not too good at storing energy in the form of glucose or other organic compounds, they spend most of their energy just trying to keep alive and functioning. because of this, it isn't as efficient to ferment plant biomass into ethanol than it is to synthesize water gas [using energy derived from solar power/nuclear etc.] then "fermenting" that to ethanol.

Hemp is already best suited for this

[Hubbell]

More ethanol can be obtained from it than from corn and it is also a weed, so it can grow ANYWHERE. It produced 5-10x as much pulp as regular trees do so the paper industry could profit from them, and hemp ropes are what make the shipping industry possible, or atleast did back years ago.

Re:Brazil, anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Transportation only accounts for less than one percent of US oil consumption.

According to your link, it looks more like 14/(14+5+1+1) = 67%. http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/figure_82.html [doe.gov]

Natural Gas != Oil

[Anonymous Coward]

That link that you gave is not for oil, but rather natural gas.

While it is true that many people do not realize that transportation is only one part of the pie with gas consumption, it is far more than 1%. According to this link [wri.org], in 1998 it was 24%. While it is true that items such as power generation use more oil than transportation, a Prius or two still does help.

Re:Brazil, anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you serious?

Last fun fact. Think your Prius is helping with that pesky foreign oil "problem", or (laughs) that you're "fighting terrorism"? Think again. Transportation only accounts for less than one percent of US oil consumption.

From the article you linked to, transportation accounts for less than 1% of _natural gas_ consumption. Also:

Most of the increase is in the transportation sector, which is projected to account for 73 percent of total liquid fuels consumption in 2030, up from 67 percent in 2005

(Emphasis mine)
So much for reading graph titles...

Re:Brazil, anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Last fun fact. Think your Prius is helping with that pesky foreign oil "problem", or (laughs) that you're "fighting terrorism"? Think again. Transportation only accounts for less than one percent of US oil consumption.

Better check your figures. From your link:

Transportation Uses Lead Growth in Liquid Fuels Consumption

U.S. consumption of liquid fuelsincluding fuels from petroleum-based sources and, increasingly, those derived from such nonpetroleum primary fuels as coal, biomass, and natural gasis projected to total 26.9 million barrels per day in 2030, an increase of 6.2 million barrels per day over the 2005 total. Most of the increase is in the transportation sector, which is projected to account for 73 percent of total liquid fuels consumption in 2030, up from 67 percent in 2005 (Figure 82).

    http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/gas.html [doe.gov]

67 percent now, 73 percent in 2030. So your car does contribute to global warming.

Re:not a good long term option.

[TheMeuge]

Because grown ethanol is carbon-neutral. You burn the fuel, CO2 is emitted, plants fix CO2 into carbohydrates via photosynthesis... you make ethanol out of these plants, and burn it, emitting CO2. Rinse and repeat.

Just like nearly every other system on the face of the Earth, it's just another way of using solar power.

Re:Answers

[Chandon Seldon]

1) we have the infrastructure to use it immediately.

We've got the infrastructure to distribute diesel fuel directly - and existing diesel engines can run on high quality commercial biodiesel with no modification at all; you can treat such biodiesel exactly like traditional diesel fuel.

2) It's not corrosive or particularly toxic.

I guess diesel fuel is a bit more toxic than ethanol, but it's nothing we haven't been dealing with for a very long time.

3) unlike algae it's grown by agricultiure so Archer Daniels Midland can get their cut of the pie.

This is the main reason, and it's a big mistake to let them turn subsidized food into fuel inefficiently. The algae to biodiesel process takes *no* food land and produces much higher energy density fuel through a much more efficient process.

Re:Why a grant??

[wsherman]

Ok, assuming the federal should be funding this sort of research*,...
*I don't see why it should be. The energy market is so large, there seems like more than enough incentive for innovation.

Well, in practice it can be quite difficult to reward innovation in a meaningful way. The current practice is for the government to impose artificial monopolies (patents, copyrights, etc.) but it's difficult to determine in a natural way how severe the monopoly should be.

Should the monopoly last 10 years or 100 years? Should the monopoly prevent anyone else from solving the problem at all or should the monopoly allow anyone else to solve the problem as long as the solution is not exactly the same? Does it matter if the solution is so novel that no one else would have thought of it in 100 years or if the solution is so obvious that there were dozens of other organizations that would have developed exactly the same solution within a few months of each other?

You can try to have a free market for "intellectual property" but, in the end, it's some government bureaucrat who (more or less arbitrarily) decides the essential features of that market.

More broadly, there are many examples of services that become extremely cumbersome when forced into a "free market" framework. An obvious example is the fire department. You don't really want to be shopping shop around the free market on the rare occasions that your house is burning down. Scientific research is not as immediate as a house fire so it's easier to "let the free market deal with it". In the end, though, if you want the benefits of scientific research then you're going to have to pay for it - and there are compelling reasons to think that some sort of government funding is the least cumbersome method of funding scientific research.

That's not to say that the current model of government funding for scientific research could not be substantially improved - just that the "free market" isn't some magical solution for funding scientific research efficiently.

Oh no! That might put some slaves out of a "job"

[glitch2718]

Back to making sugar, I guess.... http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6266712.stm [bbc.co.uk] They were said to be working in inhumane conditions on a sugar cane plantation in the Amazon. An ethanol-producing company which owns the plantation has denied allegations of abusing the workers. Human rights and labour organisations believe that between 25,000 to 40,000 people could be working in conditions akin to slavery in Brazil. Many farmers in the Amazon region who incur debts are forced to work virtually for free in order to repay the money they owe. Labour ministry officials and prosecutors discovered more than 1,100 workers working 14 hours a day and living in conditions described as "appalling". It is the largest such raid in Brazil, a country beset by the problem of slave labour. Officials said that the labourers lived in overcrowded conditions with no proper sanitation facilities. Ethanol industry The plantation was located about 155 miles (250 km) from the mouth of the Amazon river near the town of Ulianopolis. Amazon workers Many workers in the Amazon work on plantations to pay debts The company which runs the plantation denies the charges against it and said that the workers were paid good wages by Brazilian standards. But the BBC's Gary Duffy, in Sao Paulo, says many are thought to fall into debt slavery by paying for transportation to work far from where they live and by buying overpriced tools and food. Ethanol sells in Brazil at half the price for conventional petrol and is said to be a greener fuel for cars. Recently, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva pledged to bring industry leaders and workers together to "to discuss the humanisation of the sugar cane sector in this country". He was acting after being criticised for calling Brazil's ethanol producers "national and world heroes", despite critics accusing producers of exploiting workers in the sugar cane and ethanol industry. The Mobile Verification Task Force, which conducted the raid on the plantation, was founded in 1995 by the Labour Ministry and claims to have freed more than 21,000 workers from debt slave conditions at more than 1,600 farms across Brazil. The Roman Catholic Church estimates there are some 25,000 workers living in slave-like conditions throughout Brazil, most of them in the Amazon.

Re:Hemp is already best suited for this

[jhines]

Actually, the pressed seed gives oil that is very much like like diesel, and was considered by Ford and others before WW2.

Re:Brazil, anyone?

[SEE]

So...Brazil isn't a developed country?

Er, no, it isn't.

See the full list of developed/advanced countries. Do you see Brazil? [wikipedia.org]

To double check, we can look in terms of per capita PPP GDP [cia.gov]. Brazil is $8,800, while Australia is $33,300, France is $31,100, Germany is $31,900, Italy is $30,200, and Japan is $33,100.

To cross-check the GDP numbers, let's consider transportation and communications development, data from the 2007 World Almanac and Book of Facts. There are 80 personal vehicles per 1000 people in Brazil, 498 in Australia, 486 in France, 542 in Germany, 570 in Italy, 433 in Japan. Airline passenger-miles per capita per year run 152 in Brazil, 2640 in Australia, 1171 in France, 937 in Germany, 366 in Italy, 800 in Japan. Railroad track miles per thousand population are 97 in Brazil, 1676 in Australia, 301 in France, 348 in Germany, 206 in Italy, 114 in Japan. The number of televisions per 1000 people is 333 in Brazil, 716 in Australia, 620 in France, 581 in Germany, 492 in Italy, 719 in Japan. The number of radios is 434 per 1000 in Brazil, 1391 in Australia, 946 in France, 948 in Germany, 880 in Italy, 956 in Japan. Phone lines per 1000 run 224 in Brazil, 564 in Australia, 586 in France, 667 in Germany, 431 in Italy, 461 in Japan. Newspaper circulation is 45.9 per 1000 in Brazil, 161 in Australia, 142 in France, 291 in Germany, 109 in Italy, 566 in Japan.

And now, we can look at (a href="http://earthtrends.wri.org/text/energy-resou rces/variable-351.html">energy use per capita. See Brazil down there with 1,067.6 kilograms of oil equivalent? Compare with Australia at 5,723.3, France at 4,518.4, Germany at 4,203.1, Italy at 3,127.2, and Japan at 4,040.4.

So we see it is harder to meet energy demand in developed countries than in others, like Brazil.