If gasoline prices have you a little frustrated, there is a silver lining. As I said long ago, rising prices bring new technology. I came across this rather amazing article over the weekend about Craig Venter, the fellow who mapped the human genome, and who is now working on reengineering simple life forms to consume carbon dioxide and give off octane-based fuels as waste! Says Venter:
We have modest goals of replacing the whole petrochemical industry and becoming a major source of energy. … We think we will have fourth-generation fuels in about 18 months, with CO2 as the fuel stock.
There has been a lot of work in the biofuel industry using simple organisms to help produce biodiesel and ethanol and there have been a lot of recent advances in producing hydrogen but this work by Venter, can produce gasoline while getting rid of CO2.
The genetics of octane-producing organisms can be tinkered with to increase the amount of CO2 they eat and octane they excrete, according to Venter.
The limiting part of the equation isn’t designing an organism, it’s the difficulty of extracting high concentrations of CO2 from the air to feed the organisms
The ancient alchemists were always trying to turn lead into gold, but, compared to this, they were wasting their time. Craig Venter is no marginal garage inventer, this is cutting edge science by a highly respected geneticist. CO2 turned into fuel, now that’s cool! No, … that’s mind boggling.
willie schmitz says
Thanks for the tip. Interesting guy.
http://www.answers.com/topic/mycoplasma-laboratorium?cat=technology
Sean says
That’s beyond cool, that’s incredible. Good luck to him!
Clive Makinson-Sanders says
That guy better get some security guards, and perhaps lock himself in a bullet proof chamber for the remainder of his research.
I love the possiblity, but im sure the gas companies DO NOT!
guitargeek says
I think this is great, but only as a stop gap measure on the way to the electron economy.
As for “getting rid” of the CO2 by turning it into gasoline, what happens when you burn this new fuel? I don’t think we’re talking about any kind of net loss of CO2 in the atmosphere…
Gen Waylaid says
So where does the energy come from? For any chemical process to be useful from a metabolic standpoint, the total enthalpy of formation of the products must be less than the total enthalpy of formation of the reactants (the cell environment is basically isothermal, so no need to consider heat energy).
Hydrocarbons burn well, releasing lots of enthalpy as heat. If you want to drive that transformation backwards, you need some additional reactants that contain plenty of energy, or some environmental energy source such as sunlight.
Gen Waylaid says
guitargeek,
Most of the carbon probably will go right back into the atmosphere. A small amount will end up as a sludge of dead cells (fertilizer?). What Venter is planning to do is make biofuel very efficiently.
JC says
Sounds like a great subtle bio-terror weapon, depending on the conditions needed to make it convert to fuel.
Not deadly, but I imagine a bit of this in every field in a foreign country would shut down the food supply as I imagine crops and fuel don’t mix.
I guess it all depends on what temperature the conversion needs to take place.
skadamo says
I remembered him from Celera Genomic Corp (CRA). I rode that media fueled stock from $40/share to 230ish and right back down to $80. 😀 I will never forget his name. He seems to be someone investors follow and are not afraid to throw money at.
His plans for mapping the Genome were technologically ahead and faster than the government funded project it competed with. He seemed to be some kind of renegade scientist entrepreneur. Anyway, I don’t doubt he will succeed and it will probably be a good media show if it is anything like CRA.
Cool stuff. I hope the suicide feature has a fall back plan.
kneeslider says
Yes, I also seem to remember stories about him. He was criticized during the genome mapping race, but he was also leading that race, as I recall, so I wondered about the criticism.
If this technology works, there’s going to be a big pile of money in it for someone but I would certainly rate this as highly speculative. The folks knowledgeable in this field can better decide that.
Of course, he’s not trying to bait the media: “modest goals of replacing the whole petrochemical industry,” I’m sure his tongue was firmly in his cheek at the time, but … you never know.
Kenneth Ferrer says
If the guy succeeds in making fuel from carbon dioxide, he would be a rich man. at the same time, millions of motorcycles will remain on the road for centuries to come, thanks to him. i for one love the idea. im also interested in investing with him. that is if he succeeds
rafe03 says
You have to invest in him BEFORE he succeeds! Buy & Hold? Well maybe a little bit.