Newly Discovered Methane-Consuming Bacterium Could Help Reduce GHG Emissions ...

www.greencarcongress.com ^ | 11/26/2007 | Staff

[Red Badger]

Great! Now all we have to do is find something that eats CO2, sequesters the carbon and releases the oxygen!.............;^0

[mvpel]

Great! Now all we have to do is find something that eats CO2, sequesters the carbon and releases the oxygen!.............;^0

Obviously, a massive government program is needed to develop this, funded by an initial grant of $100 billion.

[Red Badger]

The search could take decades........

[Greg F]

Great! Now all we have to do is find something that eats CO2, sequesters the carbon and releases the oxygen!.............;^

I think that I will never see a bacterium as lovely as a tree . . .

I'm picturing an Andromeda Strain situation; a bacteria gone wild that eats the world starting from the various methane producing buttocks of mammals and working it's way inside . . .

[GovernmentShrinker]

Not find, build.

[Red Badger]

Oh, yes, the pork projects could be endless...............

[Smokin' Joe]

I want one which 'eats' CO₂ and emits CH₄.

Under controlled conditions, it would revolutionize natural gas production (think energy, folks--these critters they are ballyhooing will eat it).

[Red_Devil 232]

The search could take decades........

Only studying tree rings will tell how long!

[tacticalogic]

If it eats methane, what does it fart?

[Greg F]

If it eats methane, what does it fart?

Crisp mountain air.

[dblshot]

I just reduce my acidic methane producing environment with a Tums.

[Red Badger]

I almost choked on my coffee.......

[stylin19a]

We have a couple of closed land fills that trap the methane and use it to provide energy to homes in the area, at a reduced rate.

Here's a stat on one of them:

"• The Greene Valley Forest Preserve gas-to-energy facility extracted 1,606,439,126 cubic feet of methane gas fromthe landfill, which generated 62,041,313 kilowatt hours for the purchaser and $317,233 in revenue for the District."

I wonder how much methane eating microbes would cut into this..

[Species8472]

I wonder how much methane eating microbes would cut into this.

I wonder what happens when this critter gets loose in our natural gas supply!

[Red Badger]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_bacteria

[bert]

Why destroy the methane when it can be used?

http://www.aircycle.com/articles/landfill/

[Tirian]

Yup. Seems far easier, especially with the new Stirling engine-based generators/cogen sets coming on-line.

Plus methanotrophs require oxygen to be pumped down to them if one is trying to remediate a landfill - not a cheap or simple task.

[who_would_fardels_bear]

GHG Emissions?

Gastrointestinal Heinie Gas Emissions, perhaps?

[BlazingArizona]

This is bunk. Methane is natural gas. The most ecologically efficient way of getting rid of methane is to burn it. This does yield CO2, but methane is twenty times as powerful a greenhouse gas than plain old CO2, so why not make use of its energy potential as heat while you’re at it?

[Hunterite]

I thought methane was tapped at garbage dumps to generate electricity. Isn’t this a little counterproductive?