Renewable Petroleum: Microbes Eat Waste and Excrete Crude Oil

DBKP ^ | June 15, 2008 | Mondoreb

[mondoreb]

Diesel fuel produced by genetically-engineered bugs.

Several Silicon Valley companies are already genetically altering microbes and small organisms--bugs, so to speak--so that they produce something for nothing.

The something? How about petroleum products.

The nothing? How about agricultural waste--wood chips or straw or other biomass.

The organisms eat the waste products and excrete crude oil.

“Ten years ago I could never have imagined I’d be doing this,” says Greg Pal, 33, a former software executive, as he squints into the late afternoon Californian sun. “I mean, this is essentially agriculture, right? But the people I talk to – especially the ones coming out of business school – this is the one hot area everyone wants to get into.”

This sounds far-fetched, but the bugs are producing crude right now. In about a month, the experimental microbes will have produced enough oil to fill the first gas tank with something engineers call "renewable petroleum".

Mr Pal is a senior director of LS9, one of several companies in or near Silicon Valley that have spurned traditional high-tech activities such as software and networking and embarked instead on an extraordinary race to make $140-a-barrel oil (£70) from Saudi Arabia obsolete. “All of us here – everyone in this company and in this industry, are aware of the urgency,” Mr Pal says.

Besides making Saudi oil a thing of the past, it will also render Al Gore's dreams of taxing the world back into the Stone Age obsolete.

[mondoreb]

Although there has been some talk of microbes producing petroleum, this is the first time I had heard that a large-scale production facility would be ready to open in about three years.

[mkjessup]

It would be more efficient if the microbes could eat liberals and excrete crude oil, it seems there would be a never-ending supply! LOL

[lesser_satan]

bump

[Lakeshark]

Ummmmmm.....

Psych 101 teaching of how to hype your stock price.

[Lakeshark]

Whoa...

You should go public.

:-)

[henkster]

It might help, but there is no way you can run the American economy on microbe poop. There just won’t be enough of it.

[Crazieman]

Why not?

[ModelBreaker]

It might help, but there is no way you can run the American economy on microbe poop. There just won’t be enough of it.

Come to Denver next august. The vaporing would power america for four years if we could put the microbes on it.

[mondoreb]

— The US Energy and Agriculture Departments said in 2005 that there was land available to produce enough biomass (nonedible plant parts) to replace 30 per cent of current liquid transport fuels. (from The Times)

[garyhope]

Sounds like Congress, poop eating and excreting flatulant hot air.

[mondoreb]

You may be right.

[Prince Caspian]

There just won’t be enough of it.

How much is enough? And how do you know how much microbe poop is possible? I'm not so sure this is a "0/1" discreet type of outcome. I see it as more of a continuum in which this could make a contribution.

[doc1019]

No, if microbes could eat liberals, the output would be the same as if you or I ate a hotdog or anything else. ;-)

[xp38]

The US uses around 20 million barrels of crude oil a day. So that is how much is enough for now. Worldwide consumption is around 80 million a day.

[hecht]

Add this to ANWR and we may become self sufficient

[GOPJ]

The organisms eat the waste products and excrete crude oil.

Too dais-ex-machina for me...

[Little_shoe]

This just seems too real to be true.

[marvlus]

interesting read.

[Dusty Road]

30 days to fill one gas tank? Thats a little short of the 840 million gallons we consume daily.

[steelyourfaith]

ping