Mass. company making diesel with sun, water, CO2

Daily Finance/AP ^ | 27/2/11 | Jay Lindsay

[Eleutheria5]

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -A Massachusetts biotechnology company says it can produce the fuel that runs Jaguars and jet engines using the same ingredients that make grass grow.

Joule Unlimited has invented a genetically-engineered organism that it says simply secretes diesel fuel or ethanol wherever it finds sunlight, water and carbon dioxide.

The Cambridge, Mass.-based company says it can manipulate the organism to produce the renewable fuels on demand at unprecedented rates, and can do it in facilities large and small at costs comparable to the cheapest fossil fuels.

What can it mean? No less than "energy independence," Joule's web site tells the world, even if the world's not quite convinced.

"We make some lofty claims, all of which we believe, all which we've validated, all of which we've shown to investors," said Joule chief executive Bill Sims.

"If we're half right, this revolutionizes the world's largest industry, which is the oil and gas industry," he said. "And if we're right, there's no reason why this technology can't change the world."

The doing, though, isn't quite done, and there's skepticism Joule can live up to its promises.

National Renewable Energy Laboratory scientist Philip Pienkos said Joule's technology is exciting but unproven, and their claims of efficiency are undercut by difficulties they could have just collecting the fuel their organism is producing.

.....

oule claims, for instance, that its cyanobacterium can produce 15,000 gallons of diesel full per acre annually, over four times more than the most efficient algal process for making fuel. And they say they can do it at $30 a barrel.

See full article from DailyFinance: http://srph.it/fSCFCE

[Eleutheria5]

You’ve watched too many disaster movies from the ‘70s

“Good point I guess, though I’m not much of a movie-goer or television-watcher so I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. Can you name the movies I’ve not seen?”

Let’s see: Frogs, Piranha, Killer Bees...
Of course, I can’t possibly know which movies you haven’t seen, because I’m not psychic. But those are the movies to which I refer.

“But I do gather kudzu is really no big problem in the South and they have good uses for it there.

So maybe you’re right; adapted bacteria is no threat whatsoever.”

Kudzu is vegetation, not bacteria, and it naturally occurs in Japan, where it is no threat whatever. Animals and vegetables removed from their natural environment, where they are compatible, and put in an environment where they are incompatible with the local ecosystem are indeed a threat. Adapted vegetation is used all the time. It’s at your supermarket and in seed catalogs.

“Eh - it’s already a naturally occurring bacteria. It hasn’t done irreparable damage in its natural state.

Can I quote you on this?”

No, because I never said it and never would. Bubonic plague, typhus, smallpox and cholera are naturally occurring bacteria, but so is yogurt culture. Are you racially profiling single-cell organisms?