Barking Moonbat Early Warning System

Death once had a near-Sarah Palin experience.

Thursday - March 20, 2008

The ultimate energy resource solution?

Oil. It’s what runs the modern world. Everything from gasoline to kerosene to plastics to synthetic rubber. We’d still be living in the early 19th century if not for good ole crude oil. But it seems to be in short supply. So we look for it, drill for it, and wind up paying for it, big time. But where does it come from? Oh you’ve heard the theories ... leftover dinosaurs and bits of primordial ooze building up over millions of years, getting squished and heated underground, blah blah blah. But somehow that doesn’t seem like the whole story. After all, we have the ability to apply heat and pressure to things in unbelievable amounts. Today we can make diamonds of better quality than the ones in the ground, and do it in just a couple days. But no oil. Well, it may turn out that the missing piece of this natural puzzle is nature herself. We’ve known for a very long time that oil is the end result of some kind of natural process, but we’ve assumed it was one that took millions of year to enact. Now it turns out that might have been a bad assumption, and that oil is the end product - the “poop” if you will - of a simple, fast acting bacterial agent. And a guy from Georgia may have found that agent.

Discovery could end energy crisis

A Tifton agricultural researcher says he has found the solution to the world’s energy crisis through genetic modification and cloning of bacterial organisms that can convert bio-mass into hydrocarbons on a grand scale. The local researcher believes his groundbreaking discovery could result in the production of 500 to 1,000 barrels of hydrocarbon fuel per day from the initial production facility. The hydrocarbon fuel — commonly known as oil or fossil fuel when drilled — will require no modification to automobiles, oil pipelines or refineries as they exist today and could forever end the United States’ dependence on foreign oil, he said.

J.C. Bell, who brought the world powdered peanut butter, has spent the last four years, identifying the bacteria that produces hydrocarbon and then finding a way to genetically alter it so that it could produce hydrocarbon in greater volume.

Bell cited a USDA study that projected it was possible to produce two billion tons of bio-mass that could be converted to hydrocarbon with some modification to agriculture and forestry practices.

Now that his discoveries have been patented, his corporation formed — Bell Bio-Energy, Inc. — and his government communications established, Bell announced his discoveries to the local press on Friday morning.

“I have received a tremendous amount of support from the state and federal government,” Bell said. “I could not have gotten this far without the help of (U.S. Sen.) Saxby Chambliss, (U.S. Sen.) Johnny Isakson, (Rep.) Jim Marshall, (Rep.) Jack Kingston and Floyd Gabler, the deputy undersecretary of the USDA.” He said, “They have opened doors for me at the Department of Defense and the EPA and EPD.”

Sources for bio-mass to be converted to hydrocarbon fuel are the forestry industry, pulp plants, agriculture and waste derived from the construction and demolition industry.

“This is the ultimate recycling,” Bell said. “Environmentalists should rejoice. We are only using waste products.” Bell said his company would take all of the waste of the plants: The tree limbs and tree tops, husks and cob of the corn, wheat stubble and corn stover.

Bell said that with ethanol, “The United Stated would have to totally rebuild our infrastructure.” He said, “We wanted to make hydrocarbon that could immediately be pumped.”

Bell said the original idea came from observing cows expel gas. “That is natural gas,” Bell said. “Cows release methane gas.” He said the gas is created by bacteria in the cow’s rumen or stomach. “These bacterial organisms are responsible for biological conversion of bio-mass into hydrocarbons,” he said.

With his research complete, Bell is in the process of building his pilot plants and production facilities. At the pilot plants, the bio-mass will be tested to select bacterial strains, bacterial genetic modification will be tested, revision of production protocols will be established, and a determination will be made of the best method of bio-mass conversion.

“We are exploring several locations for our pilot plants and production facilities,” Bell said. “We have the opportunity to put our plants in several locations.”

He estimated the budget for the research facility to be at $60 million annually and the production facilities at $250 to $300 million a year. He anticipates being in full scale production by October 1, 2009.

“What we’re doing is taking the trash like corn stalks, corn husks, corn cobs – even grass from the yard that goes to the dump – that’s what we can turn into oil,” Bell told WND. “I’m not going to make asphalt, we’re only going to make the things we need. We’re going to make gasoline for driving, diesel for our big trucks.”

Sources for bio-mass are the forestry industry, pulp plants, agriculture and waste derived from the construction and demolition industry. “We are only using waste products.” In fact, a USDA study projected it was possible to produce two billions tons of bio-mass that could be converted to hydrocarbon. How much oil does that mean? “…you’re looking at 5 billion barrels of oil per year. That would be about two-thirds of what we use now.”

Bell says his groundbreaking discovery will require no modification to automobiles, oil pipelines or refineries as they exist today and could forever end the United States’ dependence on foreign oil.

When asked why he thought no one else has patented this process, Bell answered, “It literally is because it’s too simple. Everyone was looking for a real complicated mechanism. We looked at how it occurs naturally. But it’s now going to develop in a hurry.”

AWESOME !!! And if this turns out to be the real thing, and not one of the bigger cons ever pulled, I fully expect Bell and his patent to be immediately infringed. Give him and his company a flat $25 billion and release the bacteria to the world. Every town would collect wood chips, leftover food, sawdust, grass clippings and farm waste. Anything organic will do. Including poo and roadkill? That would be very nice indeed, but I gather plantlife is the preferred source.

Can you imagine it ..."Honey, the gas tank is almost empty. Go mow the lawn.”

And all because a good ol’ boy was watching cows fart.

I ran the numbers. 2 billion tons in, 5 billion barrels out. An oil barrel holds 42 gallons, and a gallon of oil weighs 7 pounds. So what we have here is a natural process that outputs with 38.5% efficiency. That’s pretty decent. Of course, there will be lots of waste heat too, guaranteed. And I don’t know what to do with the leftover bio-slop. Maybe we can make building blocks out of the stuff. Or pump it into empty oil wells.

HUGE Update below the fold:

See More Below The Fold

Ok, a bit more looking around and I’ve found that Mr. Bell is not the only person working in this direction.

First, let’s understand that what all of these articles are talking about are generically called “biofuels”. They aren’t exactly crude oil - for one thing they have no sulphur content at all - but a biofuel is a liquid glop that is very rich in complex hydrocarbons and can be fed to existing oil refineries. I’m just getting the terms right myself; it’s all news to me. So even if an article actually does say “oil” this is what they’re talking about. On the other hand, if these bacteria can make a polyglot mix of hydrocarbons, then with a bit more research future versions could be tailored to make more specific hydrocarbons. Grass in, gas out. I think it is also very interesting that one of the most promising bacteria is mankind’s old enemy E. Coli.

MIT’s Technology Review put up an article last year on a bio-tech startup that was working on “renewable petroleum” by modifying existing bacteria:

But at a Society for Industrial Microbiology conference on Monday, the company began speaking more openly about what it has accomplished: it has genetically engineered various bacteria, including E. coli, to custom-produce hydrocarbon chains.

To do this, the company is employing tools from the field of synthetic biology to modify the genetic pathways that bacteria, plants, and animals use to make fatty acids, one of the main ways that organisms store energy. Fatty acids are chains of carbon and hydrogen atoms strung together in a particular arrangement, with a carboxylic acid group made of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen attached at one end. Take away the acid, and you’re left with a hydrocarbon that can be made into fuel.

I would consider an MIT publication to be fairly “official”.

Craig Ventner, the guy who sequenced the human genome, is doing something similar too:

Craig Venter has his own scientific institute. He led the private effort to sequence the human genome and was one of Time Magazine’s 2007 most important people. And he’s been building new life. He builds chromosomes from scratch, inserts the new chromosomes in bacteria, and then “boots up” the organisms.

The DNA he produces in his laboratory are the largest molecules ever created by people and he can individually determine what DNA to include and which to exclude. He can put in junk DNA that, when decoded, simply spells his own name, or is a poem. But, most importantly, he’s working to build in code that can force the little bugs into becoming solar-powered crude oil factories.

The new organisms, which Venter says should be multiplying in the lab in the next 18 months, would need high concentrations of CO2 (say, from the smokestack of a coal plant) to convert it to oil at maximum efficiencies. He can alter the octane of the fuel by altering the genes of the organism and, by selecting the best of thousands of molecules, he can “unnaturally select” the most efficient oil producers.

They’re calling it 4th generation biofuel, and you can expect that it will be only the first application of this fascinating and somewhat alarming new technology.

Gizmag ran an article last year about two other companies, LS9 and Amyris, working in a very VERY similar direction:

August 2, 2007 If you ever doubt the creativity of modern science, just throw a serious challenge at it and watch the myriad responses you receive. Rising oil prices and historical data are signifying that Hubbert’s “peak oil” may be upon us, and the rush is on all over the world to find viable alternative energy sources to replace the dwindling crude that’s powered us into the technology age. But what if we could just ‘grow’ more oil? The deadly bacteria E. coli, might seem like an unlikely ally, but scientists in California are claiming they have successfully genetically manipulated the deadly bug and a host of other bacteria to produce pure hydrocarbon chains that can be processed into biofuels. In fact, they’re getting so good at it that they can coax the bacteria into producing a substance that’s exceptionally close to crude oil – minus the sulfur impurities that taint the oil we pump out of the ground - and ready to be put through a standard refinery to produce petrol, diesel, jet fuel or any other petroleum product. There’s also talk of other, far more pure and powerful fuels that need no further refinement before they go to the pump.
...
estimates have put the level of production from cellulosic biomass as high as 2,000 gallons of renewable petroleum per acre.

(Cellulosic biomass is the “I have 3 PHDs” way of saying “sawdust, yard waste, and other forms of plant waste")

Back in January, AutoBlogGreen reported on efforts at UCLA to use similar bacteria to produce high energy alcohols:

The latest innovative method to produce biofuels (at least that we know about) has arrived with bacteria. A group of UCLA scientists have manipulated a set of Eschericha coli bacteria with genetic engineering so it produces isobutanol from glucose. The technique manipulates the E. Coli’s metabolic mechanisms to increase its 2-Keto Acid production levels. This component is key to synthesize isobutanol.

UCLA’s Shota Atsumi, Taizo Hanai and James C. Liao state, “Compared to traditional biofuels such as ethanol, complex alcohols such as butanol or isobutanol offer serious advantages as gasoline substitutes, because of their high energy content and low humidity absorption levels.”

Natural microorganisms can, indeed, produce amounts of complex alcohols. Using the genetic engineering techniques, researchers got bacteria producing them, but it wasn’t a simple or cheap method to develop. Besides the E. Coli, the team expects to work with less harmful bacteria, such as Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Up in Canada, researchers are taking a similar path to find a partial solution. Science Daily online magazine says Canada has all those oil sands and oil shales, and can’t do a thing with them because of the cost of extraction. Bacteria to the rescue?

An international team that includes University of Calgary scientists has shown how crude oil in oil deposits around the world—including in Alberta’s oil sands—are naturally broken down by microbes in the reservoir. Their discovery could revolutionize heavy oil and oil sands production by leading to more energy-efficient, environmentally friendly ways to produce this valuable resource.

Understanding how crude oil biodegrades into methane, or natural gas, opens the door to being able to recover the clean-burning methane directly from deeply buried, or in situ, oil sands deposits
...
The main thing is you’d be recovering a much cleaner fuel,” says Larter, Canada Research Chair in Petroleum Geology. “Methane is, per energy unit, a much lower carbon dioxide emitter than bitumen. Also, you wouldn’t need all the upgrading facilities and piping on the surface.”

Biodegradation of crude oil into heavy oil in petroleum reservoirs is a problem worldwide for the petroleum industry. The natural process, caused by bacteria that consume the oil, makes the oil viscous, or thick, and contaminates it with pollutants such as sulphur. This makes recovering and refining heavy oil difficult and costly.
...
“This is the main process that’s occurring all over the Earth, in any oil reservoir where you’ve got biodegradation,”

So it looks like this kind of research has been going on in many places for a good number of years. I’m not surprised that at least one solution has been worked out by now. Genetic and bio-engineering may be just about ready to bloom. Perhaps nanotechnology will get involved, along with other amazing developments like micro-cybernetics.

I think we are on the edge of a whole new age of discovery.

GET ME OUT OF HERE ...

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Posted by Drew458

on 03/20/2008 at 09:06 AM
Filed Under: • Amazing Science and Discoveries •
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