Posted on 03/20/2008 3:35:26 AM PDT by Neville72
Anyone that has read, "Call of the Wild", recognizes those terms.
OK, OK, I admit that I don't know how many have read that book.
Or perhaps they'll invest in it. Profit is profit.
But even environmentalists recognize a difference between carbon that was recently incorporated into plant life and "ancient" carbon pumped from the ground.
He just needs to ID the bacteria in Dino Crap.
Thanks for your reply. It’s hard to tell when reading these postings who actually has adequate background to evaluate the subject and who is just blowing CH4.
What aspect(s) of the claim do you have issue with?
The photo is funny, but I remember seeing an article on Sciencedaily about some midwestern researchers who’d found a way to engineer e coli to produce hydrogen. I am all in favor of using bacteria to produce energy, but I think it’s very dangerous to use e coli as the base bacteria. Your photo might come true. Might also have people doing the same thing.
I’m not questioning your professional experience. If what you say is true,why would Shell invest millions in a plant in Hawaii?
What is a good stump broke mule fetching these days?
And we ain’t tellin’...
Even if it works, the world burn the equivalent of ten years growth of biomass every year.
However, every new source helps.
I don’t know about that. The world produces vast quantities of biomass even without cultivation. The problem is not so much where to get the biomass as it is how to convert it economically to a usable fuel.
WAY TOO MUCH CREDIT BROTHER!
Half of all biomass is currently eaten or used. If every bit were available for fuel, it would represent about ten percent of our energy needs.
I can’t believe that number. The world produces vast quantities of forest growth, and other plant growth from algae to the weeds in your garden. We can’t be consuming 1/2 of that.
You realize, of course, that only a select minority here understand the meaning of "gee" and "haw."Gee, Haw, Whoa, Back.
Only the truly educated!
Damn! I coulda' had a V-8
I, too, find that VERY hard to believe!
Tell that to the folks in Florida & on Lake Victoria battling water hyacinth, or the folks in the Southeast watching kudzu overcome everything in it's path.
“What aspect(s) of the claim do you have issue with?”
There are many but I will address just a couple.
They basically claim that their process can use any type of plant material and convert it to oil. There is no single organism known that can efficiently break down more than a few forms of plant material. This is a major roadblock in the production of ethanol from plant waste or grasses. You need a preprocessing step to break down the fibers to get to the cellulose. They currently use an enzyme cocktail that is expensive, time consuming, and inefficient.
Once the plant material is broken down, it must be coverted to oil. In cows the grass material is ultimately converted to cow pies and methane after the nutrients are extracted. Methane is the simplest hydrocarbon and very different from oil or even gasoline. The organisms that generate methane (called methanogens) cannot convert grass to oil, nor can any naturally occuring bacteria (and they cant be made to do so by simple genetic manipulation). There is also the problem that the organisms that make methane are very difficult to work with and are killed by the presence of oxygen so his reactions would have to be oxygen free environment (not possible on a large scale reactor).
I wont even get into the problems of collecting, transporting, handling and processing 2 billion tons of plant material. Even if the miracle organisms exist, the number and size of the reactors needed to do this conversion would make your average alcohol brewery plant look like a kiddie pool.
The techical hurdles that would have to be overcome are enormous.
However, the federal government will continue to waste billions of dollars to develop hydrogen cars, fuel cell cars and make corn ethanol all of which require modifications to pipelines, refineries and even whole new auto technologies instead of pursuing this more rational approach.
“If what you say is true,why would Shell invest millions in a plant in Hawaii?”
No offense, I am happy to answer questions on this. What shell is doing is completely different from the process described in the article. Certain varieties of algae naturally produce and contain a high oil content. They use light energy to convert CO2 to oil. All you have to do is grow them and extract the oil after harvesting (which can be challenging). Its a relatively simple process as opposed to the technical nightmare Bell’s company would require.
BTW, I strongly suspect Shell is doing this as a stunt to show they are doing something green and carbon neutral.
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