Rainforest Fungus Synthesizes Diesel 244
Fluffeh alerts us to a report of a fungus that naturally produces diesel fuel, or something very close to it. "A fungus that lives inside trees in the Patagonian rain forest naturally makes a mix of hydrocarbons that bears a striking resemblance to diesel, biologists announced today. And the fungus can grow on cellulose, a major component of tree trunks, blades of grass and stalks that is the most abundant carbon-based plant material on Earth. ... [T]the paper's authors admit that the technique is far from any sort of industrial production. 'This report presents no information on the cost-effectiveness or other details to make G. roseum an alternative fuel source,' they write." NPR has an interview with the fungus's discoverer.
First Use (Score:5, Funny)
I think it would be really poetic if the first use of this fungus is to digest the entire Patagonian rain forest into sweet, greasy diesel.
Re:First Use (Score:5, Funny)
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That's funny, but it is exactly what happens in the Alberta oil sands.
Massive amounts of energy are used to extract oil from oil-saturated sand. The oil is then refined into gasoline, some of which inevitably ends up powering the extraction machinery. [wikipedia.org]
You need a mod +1 ironic on top of the funny...
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Massive amounts of energy are used to extract oil from anything, make renewable energy equipment or produce biofuels. The power carrier is then refined into something which inevitably ends up powering the production machinery.
You see an alternative energy solution, the first thing to ask for is the energy balance. You'll surprised at the filtering ability of that question.
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Pretty spiffy (Score:3, Interesting)
if you ask me. I hope we are smart and research more ways to provide energy, and don't just hop on another band wagon technology.
Re:Pretty spiffy (Score:5, Insightful)
This by itself may not be the breakthrough we're looking for. None of the other alternative energy stories on /. in the past few months may be either. But they keep coming, research continues in countless labs and studies across the globe, some things don't work, and others lead to more inquiry, and that's what is really important.
This will not be a puzzle solved by a single genius in a moment of discovery. It will be solved over time, by many talented people with many discoveries. But I think that's why it's safe to say it will be solved.
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Um.... best = "most profitable" in this case. That is, the best alternative fuel is the one with the lowest costs and highest return on investment. Those costs include cost of manufacture, distribution, and infrastructure upgrades needed for widescale use.
If you're going to try to redefine "best" to be "the one that kills the fewest four-toed sloths" or something, dream on. This is the real world.
Re:Pretty spiffy (Score:5, Insightful)
Um.... best = "most profitable" in this case. That is, the best alternative fuel is the one with the lowest costs and highest return on investment. Those costs include cost of manufacture, distribution, and infrastructure upgrades needed for widescale use.
I'm sorry, but where did you get the idea that environmental costs show up explicitly and directly on balance sheets? In the real world, the most profitable investment may have a huge environmental cost canceling any benefit therefrom. Even restrcting to nominally "eco-friendly" fuels, you have to factor in their *relative*, *total* environmental harm, and weigh it against the utility to users, in order to find which is the best. And since "total life-cycle environmental harm" is not a parameter in the corporate profitability computation, we shouldn't be surprised if they don't factor it in.
Of course, environmental costs do, in a sense, show up in balance sheets ... but not in any efficient, sensible way. They manifest as stuff like:
- Bribe to regulator.
- Lobbyist salaries.
- $Environmenal_harm1 denial campaign.
- Compliance costs of $efficiency_standard1 which barely accomplishes anything.
- Goodwill (modulo the impact of advertising)
Please, please stop assuming "profitability within current system" is the same as "efficiency, discounting for meaningful environmental damage".
No, I'm not a greenie, just upset at how blind people can get to the other side's arguments.
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I never said they did. What I said is that the non-balance sheet environmental costs don't make a difference in decisionmaking, because everyone who matters ignores them. Do you really think China's Ministry of Transportation gives a shit about Braziallian rain forests? Or BP's stockholders? They don't, or at least not enough to matter when it comes down to money.
If the options are $X for thi
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Yeah, good point, environmental regulations have never been passed (especially not based on new technological feasibilities), nor have they been followed or enforced, nor has any injuction been awared against any polluter, nor has any country been pressured into more environmentally-friendly policies, nor has any major group of countries agreed to adhere to environmental policies,.
Or at least, such are the new facts I've learned about the world you're posting from.
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Witness the power of hope.
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So what your saying is this is a horse of an entirely different color? Well maybe this is pretty spiffy other than same old rehash.
But still, it would be nice to see some practical developments as well as theoretical applications. We'll see where this goes. I just hope it doesn't go in to hole never to be seen again.
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Just take out the genes that make the diesel and
put it in a standard yeast.
Is that sort of like making a deviled egg?
Sounds just about as easy!
Joke of the Day! (Score:5, Funny)
One is a parasitic inhuman slime capable of producing copius amounts of fuel, and the other is a mushroom.
Wrong fuel (Score:5, Funny)
When we looked at the gas analysis, I was flabbergasted," said Gary Strobel, a plant scientist at Montana State University
So it's not producing diesel, but some fuel called "Flabbergas"
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Don't you mean Fungas?
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If that is what it sounds like, the US can become a net energy exporter in no time at all!
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The other scientist, who was researching "flubbergas" inhaled a single breath of the gas, started to bounce violently off the walls, floor and ceiling, escaped out through an emergency exit, and has yet to be found.
1. isolate the genes (Score:5, Insightful)
2. put them in a plant that expresses the diesel in an easily harvested format
3. profit. MAJOR profit. and just financial profit
a. geopolitical: you don't fund wahabbi islam via saudi arabia, blowhards in venezuela, or neoimperialism in russia.
b. environmental: you don't add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, you simply recycle it.
c. economic: a stable agricultral source of fuel is a lot better for a healthy economy than undependable one you need to mine
please, someone, go win your nobel prize for chemistry, biology, AND peace, and isolate those genes. and then someone else: make your first trillion, turn this genetically engineered plant into a major company
Who the hell modded parent Troll? (Score:2)
Please mod parent UP!
The basic premise of the parent post, sucking the right genes out of the fungus and splicing them into something a little more productive, is right in the frickin' article and bears repeating:
Troll my ass...
Re:Who the hell modded parent Troll? (Score:5, Funny)
I marked him troll. I am a wahabbi living in venezuela, and I summer in Russia where I volunteer for the local young men's neoimperialism association (YMNA). I was upset by the "blowhard" comment, but what really stung was the implication that I didn't deserve all the billions I've been getting.
Not to mix a joke with a serious point, but his point number two of "put them in a plant that expresses the diesel in an easily harvested format" seems a bit off. The genes take cellulose and break it down, wheras plants make the cellulose to make themselves. It would probably be rather inefficient to have the plants digest themselves. I think it would be easier to come up with a culture system to feed non-foodstock plant material into bacteria engineered to digest the cellulose.
What would be truly a shoe-in for a nobel would be if you could engineer a 2 microbe system, one to make cellulose from photosynthesis, the other to digest the cellulose, either in tandem to continuously produce fuel or after some harvesting. Naturally I have no idea as to the feasibility of any part of that, so don't blame me if you you're a venture capitalist and this idea goes nowhere. ;-)
Your sig.. (Score:4, Informative)
I used to be your average Joe Sixpack. After 8 years of Bush, I'm now your average Joe 40-oz.
This seems funny at first, because comparing one 12 oz beer of a sixpack to a 40 oz of malt liquor yields more drinking. But, a sixpack of 12 oz beers is really 72 oz. So now I'm confused. Do you actually drink less beer now than you used to?
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AC is almost correct, it's an economy joke, not a "I have to drink more to forget" joke. It's more confusing to others than I anticipated. A 6 pack has more alchohol but also costs more. I'll get around to changing it eventually.
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A six pack has more liquid, but not more alcohol. 72 x 5% alcohol by volume for the average beer = 3.6 oz of alcohol. A 40oz bottle of malt liquor at an average of 40% alcohol by volume = 16oz of liquor. You'll get much drunker drinking a 40 of rye than drinking a 6 pack of beer. This should be obvious without needing to do the math.
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mm-MM! Let's go to the sugar bush. And kids -- stay away from the trees with teeth!
Systems of Plants and Fungi (Score:3, Interesting)
Well I'm lichen your idea... Technically a lichen [wikipedia.org] has a fungus and something that photosynthesizes, usually algae or cyanobacterium (or sometimes both). And the nutrients that get passed back and forth usually aren't cellulose, but maybe it'd be possible to get that kind of fungus together with a plant.
Alternatively, you could combine the fungus's cellulose-to-diesel features with growing cellulose-stalked grains, so instead of using corn to produce ethanol competing with using corn for food, you'd grow t
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Better idea: let's engineer grass to express tetrahydrocannabinol (active ingredient in pot). It might not win a nobel, but it would probably win some type of award from "High times," and would make mowing the lawn a more enjoyable chore.
your own body violates your premise (Score:2)
your liver produces glucose from glycogen stores that your muscles can burn. your body has an entire organ system, your adipose tissue, whose sole purpose is to produce a partly oxidized hydrocarbon (your fat) to store energy that is later consumed in times of food scarcity
going further, there are plants that manufacture oils that are then later consumed by the plant's offspring: its called a seed
this is not a radical or broken concept on my part, the production of something that the creature consumes itsel
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First of all, let me say I didn't actually mod you troll, that was a joke. Even if I had, my commenting on it would have undone my mod, you can see the moderation is still there, so I can't be the one who did it.
this is not a radical or broken concept on my part, the production of something that the creature consumes itself
Right, the fundamental concept isn't broken, but I think there are clear problems with the system that would at least need to be worked around.
of course, a plant that produces cellulose support tissue that is degraded by its own cells is a horrible mutant that wouldn't make it 6 days in the wild and would look like a stunted deformed pile of oozing plant diesel pus. who cares? if it makes diesel.
I did say inefficient, which is why one would care. If you're going to the trouble to make a transgenic organism to make fuel, you'd want to make it as eff
no. dude: (Score:2)
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furthermore, you could have the plant's diesel production pathway exist only in certain parts of the plant, or expressed only at certain times during the year. attaching the diesel making genes to genes that express only in certain parts of the plant, or express only at certain times of the year
Yes, but again, you'd be adding a whole layer of complexity there: regulation of transgenes. I'd be suprised if we currently knew how to do that with plants. It would not be an issue with microbes. And any way of collecting the weeped diesel would require much more complex systems than a vat, which is what would be needed with my system.
or forget all of this, and go with what nature gave us: a fungus that makes diesel inside trees. naturally amp up the production of diesel via genetically engineering, or tried and true horticultural methods that we have used to have giant apples and corn ears, and collect the diesel like we collect maple syrup: stick a tap in and let it drain off. you could have orchards of trees, where instead of dates or pears, you get diesel leaking into buckets
Well, I think you'd still have efficiency problems. The fungi aren't producing enough diesel to use, you'd have to concentrate it more. You'd again have the harvesting
You are both adding too much complexity (Score:2)
The proper way to do it is to skip the whole cellulose bit. Go straight from sunlight, water, and carbon to cetane. Or iso-octane. Or whatever. Though, I don't think that is what this article is about.
dude, you're out of your league (Score:2)
attaching the expression of genes to only certain parts of an animal or under certain times/ environmental changes is old hat. the guys who won the nobel prize this year for
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I guess it is partially stubborness, because we've dropped the many advantages my system has on yours, I guess I've already won ;-P
I am curious as to tissue or temporal specific promoters in plants. I'm guessing you don't know of any either. The lactose promoter would be good if you were going to make diesel from your small intestine, but of course that's not what you were suggesting, so you'd need a specific promoter, which may or may not be known. Like I said: another layer of complexity that's not an
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Of course, if this happens, someone will start whinging about all the food we're not growing because of that evil biodiesel being more profitable than corn.
Followed quickly by laws making it illegal to grow the stuff, so as to allow us to concentrate on growing food....
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How do you figure? Ethanol use by vehicles is expanding by various government decrees in the US even as we speak.
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And people are whinging about it as we speak. It's just a matter of time before someone decides we must "think of the children" or some such rot, and make it illegal.
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The only thing I'd caution is that sucking out genes that allow something to eat cellulose and having it somehow released to the wild could be very detrimental to the environment and industry. Cellulose is intentionally hard to break down for exactly the reasons that plants don't really want random organisms attacking them there. If we go and engineer microbes that can eat away at stalks, leaves, tree trunks, grasses, etc., we should be really careful about how it's applied.
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The last time someone did this, the biomass of the entire planet was dissolved into great big pools of oil that we are still using today.
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And the Dinosaurs were not amused, I tell you.
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I think you missed something...
This is not a plant. It is a fungus... it eats plants. So what you are suggesting is a plant that eats itself.
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There's just one problem (Score:2)
grey goo (Score:2)
Don't you see, this is natures version of grey goo. Who needs nano-machines when you can have a fungus do it for you... It's a bad idea; a really bad idea.
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> It would be carbon neutral only if the fuel was
> being created from biomass that was specifically
> grown for that purpose,
Or if the biomass would otherwise be disposed in a non-carbon neutral fashion.
For instance, grown on trash that otherwise rots and produces methane gives a big win, as the CO2 produced is less of a problem than the C2H6 would have been. Grown on biomass that would otherwise be burned, ala sugarcane stalks, is probably neutral (looks like it, but would want to calculate it to
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Methane is CH4, but other than that, you're correct, I think.
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But to be fair, the CO2 IS better than the Ethelene C2H4....
And just a day or so ago. . . (Score:2)
people were whining about 1/3 of the amphibian population possibly going extinct in the near future and why should they care? I'm sure these same people adhere to the adage, as promulgated by Rush Limbaugh, of cutting down all the trees to make way for development.
This, among many others, is a classic example of why we need to keep the rainforests around for as long as possible. Who knows what other goodies are lying in wait for some curious scientist to find?
If people think that clear-cutting forests and
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And even Manhattan isn't absolutely devoid of greenery. There's Central Park, and several other smaller parks scattered out on the island.
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True, except that Central Park was specifically set aside as an open space because those in the upper echelon of society were trying to create something along the lines of London and Parisian parks so New York would be recognized on the international scene. It wasn't an altruistic creation in the strictest sense. Regardless, it certainly provides an outlet for the masses.
The few smaller parks I've visited, Sara Delano Roosevelt being the most recent, are nice diversions from the concrete, steel and marble
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Oh, its definitely the same in the rest of the country. When I moved into my house, everything around was basically farmland. Now? Its subdivisions as far as the eye can see.
What's worse is that the mayor and city council of my town explicitly voted against higher density development - arguing that more individual homeowners make for a more stable tax base than commercial property. We'll see how well that argument holds up in the current financial crisis.
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What is this? Reverse name dropping? "Well we could always X like Y suggests..." for X="Some Unpopular Activity" and Y="Some Person I Don't Like".
"Well we could always DISEMBOWEL MANATEES like GEORGE CLOONEY suggests..."
"Well we could always EAT BABIES like BILL MAHER suggests..."
"Well we could always FUEL MAGIC DREAM MACHINES WITH THE SOULS OF FORSAKEN CHILDREN like AL
Obvious Joke (Score:5, Funny)
There are lots of ways to make diesel fuel (Score:5, Insightful)
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But there is a problem with this idea. Turbo-diesels require highly refined and filtered fuel to run properly and not clog the injectors and filters. You would have to restrict it to non-turbocharged and non-injected engines to be able to use most of the homemade stuff. Thankfully there are a lot of them still around. Mercedes says that nearly 80% of all of the vehicles it's ever made are still on the road. You can't hardly go a mile in most towns without running across an old Mercedes diesel.
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Last I checked, almost all diesels (with some VERY rare exceptions) were injected. ;)
It's direct injection that's the problem (where fuel is... directly injected into the cylinder.) Even "indirect" injection is more direct than most gasoline fuel injection - gasoline engines inject it into the intake air, whereas IDI diesels inject into a prechamber in the head, where it ignites and then mixes with the main intake charge in the cylinder.
And, turbochargers just increase the pressure of the intake air above a
Those engines are already here.... (Score:5, Informative)
....Just look under the hood of one of DoD's tactical military vehicles. You'll find a turbocharged, multi-fuel Diesel, capable of burning anything from LH to bear grease.
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....Just look under the hood of one of DoD's tactical military vehicles. You'll find a turbocharged, multi-fuel Diesel, capable of burning anything from LH to bear grease.
DoD is also exempt from emissions regulations.
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....Just look under the hood of one of DoD's tactical military vehicles. You'll find a turbocharged, multi-fuel Diesel, capable of burning anything from LH to bear grease. ....See; DoD ain't so dumb....
And yet, last I checked, the DoD won't use anything other than South America, the Middle-East, Russia, etc's finest distillates in Iraq & Afghanistan.
The only place the DoD is currently willing to use biodiesel is domestically.
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No. No he did not. The French Otto Company did at the request of the French Government. I don't know why people get modded +5 insightful for myths.
http://www.switchbiofuels.com/2007/05/05/common-diesel-engine-myths-debunked/ [switchbiofuels.com]
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"...and then plants to make the stuff in numerous ways depending on what is most economical in a given region."
The trouble is that always the most economical method is to just pump it out of the ground. Making it from bio sources costs about $5 a gallon.
Next: Herds of mattresses found in the Sahara! (Score:5, Funny)
universe size = sahara size (Score:2)
for small values of universe and large values of sahara
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Just one step closer to Douglas Adams' statement that, in such a large Universe, most things one could possibly imagine (and a lot one would rather not), grow somewhere.
If you've got decent genetics/bioengineering and don't have it growing near you already, you soon will. It's only a matter of time before we grow our own cars and homes. It's just a matter of making it cheaper/easier than existing methods.
can't wait for this (Score:4, Interesting)
yet I won't hold my breath. In the mean time, I will continue to burn B20 and SVO in my old diesel.
In addition to brewing diesel from cellulose, I would also like to see biofuels manufacturers brew butanol (with Clostridium acetobutylicum, or better) from cellulose. Seriously, it is a much better gasoline replacement than E85. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butanol [wikipedia.org]
In any case, foodstock based ethanol is the WORST FUEL SUBSTITUTE EVAR. http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0512/p08s01-comv.html [csmonitor.com]
If the chevy volt doesn't turn out to be a piece of shit, (yeah, good luck with that. Can GM manage NOT to make a piece of shit?) I would totally buy that for my daily commute and keep the diesel for my occasional interstate forays. Or maybe the Th!nk OX http://blogs.cars.com/kickingtires/2008/03/think-ox-concep.html [cars.com] will be available in the US by then. Or maybe Toyota will get its head out of its ass and realize that not everyone thinks a hybrid is the future, and they will out-chevy-volt the chevy volt.
While I am enumerating my wish list, a 10 minute recharge battery, and start the infrastructure build-out by creating charging stations at toll-way rest areas, then add them to interstate rest areas (which tend to be 50 miles apart on most of the interstates I've traveled.) http://www.onelectriccars.com/lightning-gt-promises-10-minute-recharge/74/ [onelectriccars.com]
That will "untether" electric cars, and is feasible with current battery technology. Then fueling stations can invest in charging devices if enough people have EVs in their area
http://www.afdc.energy.gov/afdc/fuels/electricity_locations.html [energy.gov]
heh. I'm just rambling now...
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In any case, making any fuel from food stock is a bad idea. I don't think anyone really considers doing that on the truly large scale other than to make fuel in the short term as a proof of concept.
Iowa corn farmers would beg to disagree. They'd also love to be as rich as Saudis.
Perfect example (Score:2, Insightful)
Score one for the tree huggers (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this makes a really good case for the value of bio-diversity, and why slashing and burning rainforests is bad for even non-aesthetic reasons.
If the entire Patagonian rain forest had been converted to crop land and then (a few seasons later) dessert, we may have never discovered a fungus like this, on account of it no longer existing.
The other way to read this: (Score:2)
...there's probably a lot of diesel under the Patagonian rain forests.
Cellulose ? oh crap (Score:5, Funny)
Too bad it doesn't run on cellulite, that would solve America's energy problems for millenia.
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Who needs fungus. Bodies burn just fine.
Soylent Green is PEOPLE!!!
I couldn't resist.
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Just great, I am now imaging people driving around with their neighbor's arm or leg stick out of the gas tank. If the police pull them over they just say their commuting and that they LIKE to sit in the back of the car...
Overheard from the oil companies: (Score:2)
Quick! Kill it with fire!
Mortierella spp (Score:2)
Mortierella spp such as M. isabellina will also produce oils. The issue is the biological efficiency and robustness of the bug.
We have many cellulose digesters and and indeed many very robust fungus which can handle the lignans and pentosans found in many agricultural wastes. So there is a very good chance we can biologically turn these wastes into liquid fuels. However we can also use destructive pyrolysis and this is a well known very rapid and robust technique which will not require very stringent pha
EROEI? (Score:2)
Better check out the EROEI Energy returned on energy invested.
Seems to be a well known fact that each food calorie requires 10 calories worth of oil/natgas for transportation, heavy farm machinery, fertilizers, pesticides, etc.
It's unlikely this fungus converts much above 50% efficiency. After a few centuries of careful genetic engineering we can get some alcohol yeasts up to around 20%, so even 50% is kind of optimistic for this fungus.
Also it probably requires some processing, lets say again at 50% effic
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Assuming that we set up shop next to an already existing source of cellulose (large scale wood chipper, like a lumberyard?) and convert their waste into fuel, then our energy losses include culturing the microbe and whatever energy they reclaimed by burning the wood.
Anything from 0.5-2 barrels lost per barrel produced, depending on a bunch of factors I couldn't estimate without research. So this process wi
Re:but it's still only bio-diesel, Nope (Score:2)
Switch grass is not a crop you can eat, and it would ideally be grown on marginal land.
Waste paper could also be used, do you eat a lot of that?
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Yeah, because we eat a lot of tree trunks, blades of grass, and stalks. Plus we eat things like scrub weeds that can grow in the harshest of conditions with no irrigation or pesticides.
Or we could convert them into biodiesel.
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There are options that don't require cutting into the food chain. I'm not sure why so many people assume biofuels == food shortage.
Because for some reason this country seems to have decided that biofuels == corn.
On top of that, don't we still have farmers paid to NOT grow crops? To keep the prices up? Get rid of that, let them grow crops for fuel.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperate_rainforest [wikipedia.org]
Nope. Not a necessary qualification for rain forest. "Rain Forest" needs well... um... lots of rain to qualify.
We have rain forest in northern United States, and Chile and Argentina have a bunch on the southern tip of your continent.
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Not really that long a shot. (Score:3, Informative)
If you haven't already, anybody who expects to have any clue about this at all should watch the Paul Stamets video [youtube.com] of his presentation to the TED conference about fungi. And then buy and read Mycelium Running [powells.com] his overview book on the commercial and process implications of fungi. If you have any understanding of process engineering at all it will blow your mind.
The fungus in TFA is one of thousands that are only now being discovered and anybody who has done as I suggest above isn't likely to be terribly surp
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and algae is the most abundant carbon-based vegetation, not trees and grass.
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The humans are dead [youtube.com], already.
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Not all rain forests are 'tropical'. Sections of Chile, along with the Pacific Northwest of North America, Japan, New Zealand, and parts of China are 'temperate' rain forests.
Re:Neat (Score:4, Informative)
There is a rainforest in Patagonia. It's a temperate, as opposed to tropical, rainforest. Patagonia is a large area, and diverse, varying from near (ant)arctic to almost warm.
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I'm sure you're right. Just like Clinton bankrupted this country. Wait a sec....