The Fungus That Naturally Synthesizes Diesel
Drakeon
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So anyone else heard of this Gliocladium roseum? I just heard about it from a podcast I listen to (Stuff You Should Know) and it sounds incredibly awesome.
From a Wired Article:
From the podcast, it sounded like they only discovered this 6 months ago. Who knows how cost effective it is to replicate it on a mass scale yet, which will ultimately determine how much of a long term solution this could be to helping us solve the looming problem of running out of oil. Has anyone else heard about this little wonder fungus?
From a Wired Article:
Wired wrote:A fungus that lives inside trees in the Patagonian rain forest naturally makes a mix of hydrocarbons that bears a striking resemblance to diesel, biologists announced today. And the fungus can grow on cellulose, a major component of tree trunks, blades of grass and stalks that is the most abundant carbon-based plant material on Earth.
From the podcast, it sounded like they only discovered this 6 months ago. Who knows how cost effective it is to replicate it on a mass scale yet, which will ultimately determine how much of a long term solution this could be to helping us solve the looming problem of running out of oil. Has anyone else heard about this little wonder fungus?
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Thanks for the link. Learning every day
Hemp.
Well, from what I understand you can replicate it in a lab, which is a big plus. Question is, how much does that cost.
Yeah, I guess it would be much cheaper and easier to control to just mix the fungus and cellulose in a vat or something. Probably a lot of subsidized corn.
Those corncobs aren't going to turn themselves into something economically viable.
http://plantsciences.montana.edu/facultyorstaff/faculty/strobel/documents/mycodiesel.pdf
Meaning, the genes that produce these hydrocarbons can be put into another organism that is easier to grow, and grows faster. However, there are a few groups already working on biofuel production via bioreactor + engineered organisms, including Craig Venter (you may remember him for trying to patent the human genome) and company. So, its a pretty big race in the biotech world, very secretive. No idea if this will play a part or not, but don't get your hopes up.
It'd be better if it was roughly as expensive as extracting oil from the tar sands or whatever so that we don't have to perform the more environmentally destructive methods of extraction, but it is still expensive enough to force us towards better designed cities, regions, and towns, and more alternative methods of transportation.
Then what will we make plastic out of?
'tis a bit off topic, but I've always wondered a bit about this...
Existing plastic. And there is a lot of shit that we waste plastic on when cardboard would be just as useful if not better.
Besides, wouldn't we be using something different from 'natural diesel' in order to make plastic? I was under the impression that it came from petroleum, not refined whatever petroleum gets turned into. That being the case we'd save the real oil for plastics and switch cars over to this until battery technology catches up.
Photovoltaics don't store energy, so I'm not really getting the comparison. And biofuels suck, generally, and use more energy than they save. This doesn't really appear to be a biofuel, though. At least not in the traditional sense of it. You don't distill the fungus into flammable materials you just grow a shitload of them in a vat and it'll produce diesel for you.
But isn't this fungus is getting the energy to make the diesel from somewhere? On the basis of my (sketchy) knowledge of the conservation of energy law, the energy to make a mollecule with a high amount of energy in it has to come from somewhere, and it seems to me this is likely to be the sun. I suppose that biofuel was the wrong word to use.
I just thought that solar power (and putting it into batteries) was more the way to go, but as you just said that battery technology wasn't good enough for that, I guess not.
Solar and atomic are the best sources of energy. Gasoline and diesel are the best ways to STORE that energy. They are liquid batteries.
Well, it's more the bonds in the polymers or something like that. I mean it's just typical chemical energy stuff.
Yes, but its produced via decomposing plant and animal life from millions of years ago. Plants (and animals that fed on them) that were only able to grow thanks to the sun.
Yes, but they're still a battery that stores the energy, even if the battery itself was produced using said energy.
Actually, won't this new diesel be carbon neutral?
or was that your point.
Only if it scrubs the carbon out of the air.
Where else will the carbon come from? I would have thought the carbon used would be carbon previously taken out of the atmosphere during photosynthesis.
Oil gets used in many "biofuel" production cycles, which means releasing stored carbon from the ground.
My understanding was the process went something like:
Plant photosynthesises -> fungi breaks down plant and creates hydrocarbons -> we burn hydrocarbons, releasing water and CO2, which the plant then uses to photosynthesise.
Well yeah, carbon neutrality isn't the same as carbon reduction. It's just a matter of "this doesn't make things any WORSE." Of course, that isn't really true because of the concentrations of the carbon deposits being shifted around and concentrated, but it's the idea of it.
The Green Movement is just as corrupt as any other movement.
The Green Movement is largely the one pushing for more extreme measures and inculcates a 'pure' form of environmental policy while yelling at even a slight stray from their path. Even when objective science points out the stupidity and 'green washing' of a number of their proposed 'solutions' or when political reality gets in the way of their actual solutions.
Which isn't to say that I'm happy with the Dem's and the Waxman-Markley bill, but it's at least a step in the right direction. The notion of 100% auction or nothing seems idiosyncratic with the idea of actually improving the environment rather than just beating your chest and stroking your green 'thumb' while the world burns.
I wonder: how long would everyone have to use electric cars (assuming that is what you intend rather than a half-step) for before enough carbon has been saved to justify the 'carbon cost' of the infrastructure that would have to be in place for everyone to use these cars? How does this compare with the 'carbon cost' of the switch to this natural diesel or continuing in our ways?
(by carbon cost, I mean net emissions, or general environment hurting)
(though this is getting to be a bit of a tangent; being a newbie here, how off topic is too off topic?)
Cars are the least of our worries when it comes to carbon emissions. Vehicles aren't even a quarter of CO2 released by the country, and even within that segment you'd get far more bang for the buck by taking long haul trucks off the road and onto rails. Also, electrifying the freight rail network. The primary cause and issue that needs to be addressed is the built environment. Chiefly buildings, but also urban/regional planning at both the micro and macro scale. Cul-de-sacs and single entrance neighborhoods are the worst thing ever.
Yeppers. Fortunately the green building movement is gaining a lot of force lately thanks to advances in money-saving sustainability angles, though there are still a lot of little bugs to work out, and the usual general myopia.
land + sunlight + water + (small amount of biofuel) = (large amount of biofuel)
This would allow us to use hydrocarbon fuel sustainably without having to make (as) massive changes to our infrastructure. Wouldn't this hypothetical energy economy be carbon neutral? Incejucar implied that simply moving the carbon around without a net change in atmospheric carbon would still somehow be harmful, but surely it would be much less harmful than our current system.
And I know that carbon neutrality isn't enough, we have to eventually actively remove carbon from the atmosphere. But a hypothetical solar-electric energy economy doesn't actively remove carbon from the atmosphere either. To do that we need to re-grow the rainforests and pump unburnt fuel back into depleted oil wells.
I think a solar-electric energy economy would be a lot better than our current system, but a sustainable carbon-neutral biofuel energy economy would be even better, because it would require smaller changes to our infrastructure.