So Dies Peak Oil
These microbes would have to be considered an extreme bio-hazard and contained as such.
Should a genetically engineered bug like these make it into open ocean, seas, lakes or water ways the results would be catastrophic for the bio-sphere. An oil-spewing bloom that needs only sunlight, CO2 and water (salt, fresh or brackish) .... do you know hard it is to contain microbial bio-hazards?
The run-away effect of these bugs in the oceans over an extended period could be massive oceanic oil-slicks and plummeting CO2 levels in the oceans and then atmosphere. It would be ironic if the irrational global warming movement spawned a technology that could truly destroy the bio-sphere as we know it. The greenies will be pleading to roll out nuclear power.
Should a genetically engineered bug like these make it into open ocean, seas, lakes or water ways the results would be catastrophic for the bio-sphere. An oil-spewing bloom that needs only sunlight, CO2 and water (salt, fresh or brackish) .... do you know hard it is to contain microbial bio-hazards?
The run-away effect of these bugs in the oceans over an extended period could be massive oceanic oil-slicks and plummeting CO2 levels in the oceans and then atmosphere. It would be ironic if the irrational global warming movement spawned a technology that could truly destroy the bio-sphere as we know it. The greenies will be pleading to roll out nuclear power.
They might actually not be a biohazard. One reason for genetically modifying genmod organisms may be to cripple them so they can't live without some key nutrient unavailable in the wild. (One would do well to consider how nicely the "lysine contingency" worked in Jurassic Park, though.)
The downside to commercial use of proprietary organisms is the damned things breed. If they get out, your competition has access to them. So you try to gain some patent protection, but what you really want is something that needs a special additive you also control. ADM makes a mint selling seeds that only grow with liberal doses of their pesticides and fertilizers.
They could be engineered to be thermophilic. If they only thrive at high temperatures plus sunlight, ocean surface waters would be too cold and thermal vents too dark. They might be happy in Yellowstone, but honestly they might have come from that there briar patch.
The downside to commercial use of proprietary organisms is the damned things breed. If they get out, your competition has access to them. So you try to gain some patent protection, but what you really want is something that needs a special additive you also control. ADM makes a mint selling seeds that only grow with liberal doses of their pesticides and fertilizers.
They could be engineered to be thermophilic. If they only thrive at high temperatures plus sunlight, ocean surface waters would be too cold and thermal vents too dark. They might be happy in Yellowstone, but honestly they might have come from that there briar patch.
That may be a double edged sword, since you suddenly have to produce a new compound that will most likely need energy and money to produce.to cripple them so they can't live without some key nutrient unavailable in the wild.
Also the bacteria might mutate or pass on some genes that you would not want in the wild.
So yes, I agree with icarus (I actually said something like that earlier).
Turning 16,000 square miles of farm land into oil slush ponds is another deal alltogether. IMHO these things would have to be kept in fermentation tanks of some sort.
They are kept in a closed system of solar panel looking modules. Though this does not guarantee that they won't be released into the wild, it makes it less likely. It would be especially unlikely if the collectors were located away from natural water sources, such as in deserts.
Also, I vaguely remember something saying that the bacteria were designed so that they could not survive in the wild, but I can't find a reference.
Also, I vaguely remember something saying that the bacteria were designed so that they could not survive in the wild, but I can't find a reference.
I suppose you could grow the stuff in ponds, but that seems reckless and stupid to me. Build vertical transparent tubes filled with water and arrange them in an array such that you maximize sunlight exposure. With the current political climate people will literally pay you to take CO2 off of their hands. Bubble the CO2 (or just normal air if you want) in the bottom. Oil then collects on top. Siphon it and any gas that reaches the top (probably left over CO2). Separate the oil and sell it, pump the CO2 back in. This way you've kept the algae (or whatever) separate from the environment, your product is contained and easily harvested, and you control all of the inputs (do you really want birds pooping in your growing ponds?). This also allows you to build your tubes as tall as you want, allowing you to produce more fuel per acre.
Granted, there's a bit more of a startup cost here than just dumping the stuff in a pond, but it's a lot more practical.
Granted, there's a bit more of a startup cost here than just dumping the stuff in a pond, but it's a lot more practical.
Algae eating the high CO2 exhaust from fossil fuel power plants , vertical algae farms already exist, but face considerable challenges for economic use. I understand extracting the oil from algae is expensive from a economic and energy perspective. developing an algae or bacteria that excreted easily extracted oils may make more economic sense than an algae that is more efficient. Using the material as a feedstock for a chemical process like some of the anaerobic chemical plant (like the one that ate turkey waste) is another avenue. This would be more like biodiesels, except your algae feed stocks could provide significantly larger supplies.
And deserts would be a small barrier to spread. Wind and birds could carry spores or hardy cells intercontinental distances. And, humans with their global travel and dirty boots could possibly provide an even quicker dispersion.
Dan Tibbets
And deserts would be a small barrier to spread. Wind and birds could carry spores or hardy cells intercontinental distances. And, humans with their global travel and dirty boots could possibly provide an even quicker dispersion.
Dan Tibbets
To error is human... and I'm very human.
Cyanobacteria are not, IIRC, spore formers. A good dose of desert sunshine will probably kill them.
OTOH, some of the rascals CAN get down into cracks in rocks and grow there for eons. In this condition they are hard to kill, but relatively immobile.
You guys do know we've been selectively breeding yeasts for high ethanol production for some ten thousand years, don't you? They have not turned the oceans to wine.
OTOH, some of the rascals CAN get down into cracks in rocks and grow there for eons. In this condition they are hard to kill, but relatively immobile.
You guys do know we've been selectively breeding yeasts for high ethanol production for some ten thousand years, don't you? They have not turned the oceans to wine.
D*mn. Talk about paranoid.chrismb wrote:I believe this story to be bogus. I'll tell you why it is bogus... because it has been announced...
Chris. Grip. Acquire.
I read about a variant of this proposed in fiction in 1996. The idea has been in the aether for 20 years if not more. It is entirely plausible.
Vae Victis
I know that there are algae which create a usable form of oil instead of glucose derivatives. You are correct that the issue with these lines is that of cracking open the cell walls and getting to the oil.Algae eating the high CO2 exhaust from fossil fuel power plants , vertical algae farms already exist, but face considerable challenges for economic use. I understand extracting the oil from algae is expensive from a economic and energy perspective
A more ideal bioform would be one that photosynthesized glucose, and then metabolized that glucose into some sort of fuel and excreted it as a waste product similar to the way yeast excretes ethanol. That would leave the organism alive as well as negating the difficulty in extracting the oil.
A technique called “biomass fast pyrolysis” rapidly heats organic material to about 950C. This process produces a synthetic fuel precursor feedstock called Syngas (from synthetic gas) in about one second or less. This transformation of biomass to fuel is four to five orders of magnitude faster than through the biological routes, permitting reactor systems that are several thousand times smaller. The higher the temperature of the pyrolysis reaction, the smaller the reactor required to support the reaction.
Molten Salt Oxidation Process (MSOP) is an ecologically safe and sustainable method to convert organic matter including, wood, paper and paper processing sludge, crop waste, hard human waste, sewage, animal manure, packing and processing waste, animal fats and just about any other kinds of organic wastes you can think of into high quality fuel.
The MSOP process takes place in an all-closed reactor within a molten salt bath, in which all materials separate into synthetic gas, H2, and H20. End product of the reactor is either bio-gas or synthetic gas which can further be used to produce electricity, gasoline through gas-synthesis, bio diesel, bio gasoline A-95, LPG, and other energy products.
MSOP is most sustainable when the molten salt is heated using a high temperature (950C) nuclear reactor.
The MOSP is a universal method allowing utilization of all types of organic waste featuring a single simple common interface. This process is extremely simple and is comprised of a minimal number of stages for preparation of syngas to the fuel formulation process.
The molten salt supports raw materials with high moisture content.
In the MOSP process, the optimal operating temperatures ranges of the molten salt are 900-950C. The molten salt heat transfer medium effectively, evenly and rapidly transfers heat onto organic compounds with virtually no heat loss.
Since the process heat for this process ideally comes from nuclear power, it eliminates one of the big downsides of biofuel production; it does not deplete the soil of vital nutrients. The residual char and ash from the process is captured as a soil additive to replenish the soil producing the organic material. This also removes and sequesters additional CO2 from the air thereby mitigating global warming and at the same time makes the land more productive.
Under a cap and trade CO2 payment system, this carbon sequestration capability will afford an additional revenue stream.
The MOSP process is one important payoff in the development a small high temperature nuclear reactor with a process heat output of 950C, such a reactor will be available from India sometime after 2014. This reactor is called the Compact High Temperature Reactor (CHTR) and is being designed and built in India.
In the US, the MSOP process can be a leading application of this type of reactor.
One of the most important outputs of the Molten Salt Oxidation Process (MSOP) is biochar. In traditional methods of biomass fast pyrolysis, this char is used to fire the bioreactor and is turned into CO2. When nuclear energy is used, biochar can be saved and reapplied back to the soil.
First off, biochar is charcoal created by pyrolysis of biomass, and differs from charcoal only in the sense that its primary use is not for fuel, but for biosequestration or atmospheric carbon capture and storage. Charcoal is a stable solid rich in carbon content, and thus, can be used to lock carbon in the soil. Biochar is of increasing interest because of concerns about climate change caused by emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases (GHG).
Carbon dioxide capture also ties up large amounts of oxygen and requires energy for injection (as via carbon capture and storage), whereas the biochar process breaks into the carbon dioxide cycle, thus releasing oxygen as did coal formation hundreds of millions of years ago.
If the production of biochar is tied to liquid fuel production, huge amounts of the stuff will be generated as a result of our insatiable desire for liquid fuels.
Biochar can sequester carbon in the soil for hundreds to thousands of years, like coal. Modern biochar is being developed using pyrolysis to heat biomass in the absence of oxygen in kilns and MSOP is an analogous process.
However, to the difference of coal and/or petroleum charcoal, when incorporated to the soil in stable organo-mineral aggregates does not freely accumulate in an oxygen-free and abiotic environment. This allows it to be slowly oxygenated and transformed in physically stable but chemically reactive humus, thereby acquiring interesting chemical properties such as cation exchange capacity and buffering of soil acidification. Both are precious in clay and /or nutrient-pore and/or nutrient depleted soils.
Biochar can be used to hypothetically sequester carbon on centurial or even millennial time scales. In the natural carbon cycle, plant matter decomposes rapidly after the plant dies, which emits CO2; the overall natural cycle is carbon neutral. Instead of allowing the plant matter to decompose, pyrolysis can be used to sequester some of the carbon in a much more stable form. Biochar thus removes circulating CO2 from the atmosphere and stores it in virtually permanent soil carbon pools, making it a carbon-negative process.
In places like the Rocky Mountains, where beetles have been killing off vast swathes of pine trees, the utilization of pyrolysis to char the trees instead of letting them decompose into the atmosphere would offset substantial amounts of CO2 emissions. Although some organic matter is necessary for agricultural soil to maintain its productivity, much of the agricultural waste can be turned directly into biochar, bio-oil, and syngas.
Biochar is believed to have long mean residence times in the soil. While the methods by which biochar mineralizes (turns into CO2) are not completely known, evidence from soil samples in the Amazon shows large concentrations of black carbon (biochar) remaining after they were abandoned thousands of years ago.
Lab experiments confirm a decrease in carbon mineralization with increasing temperature, so ultra high temperature charring of plant matter increases the soil residence time and long term soil benefits of high temperature biochar.
Terra preta soils are of pre-Columbian nature and were created by the local farmers and caboclos in Brazil's Amazonian basin between 450 BC and AD 950. It owes its name to its very high charcoal content, and is characterized by the presence of charcoal in high concentrations; organic matter such as plant residues, animal feces, fish and animal bones and other material; and of nutrients such as nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), calcium (Ca), zinc (Zn), manganese (Mn).
All of these elements save nitrogen will be found in the ash residuals in the MSOP process. To mitigate nitrogen depletion of the soil, cogeneration of nitrogen based fertilizer via the co-production of ammonia is possible from the gas output of the MSOP process.
Molten Salt Oxidation Process (MSOP) is an ecologically safe and sustainable method to convert organic matter including, wood, paper and paper processing sludge, crop waste, hard human waste, sewage, animal manure, packing and processing waste, animal fats and just about any other kinds of organic wastes you can think of into high quality fuel.
The MSOP process takes place in an all-closed reactor within a molten salt bath, in which all materials separate into synthetic gas, H2, and H20. End product of the reactor is either bio-gas or synthetic gas which can further be used to produce electricity, gasoline through gas-synthesis, bio diesel, bio gasoline A-95, LPG, and other energy products.
MSOP is most sustainable when the molten salt is heated using a high temperature (950C) nuclear reactor.
The MOSP is a universal method allowing utilization of all types of organic waste featuring a single simple common interface. This process is extremely simple and is comprised of a minimal number of stages for preparation of syngas to the fuel formulation process.
The molten salt supports raw materials with high moisture content.
In the MOSP process, the optimal operating temperatures ranges of the molten salt are 900-950C. The molten salt heat transfer medium effectively, evenly and rapidly transfers heat onto organic compounds with virtually no heat loss.
Since the process heat for this process ideally comes from nuclear power, it eliminates one of the big downsides of biofuel production; it does not deplete the soil of vital nutrients. The residual char and ash from the process is captured as a soil additive to replenish the soil producing the organic material. This also removes and sequesters additional CO2 from the air thereby mitigating global warming and at the same time makes the land more productive.
Under a cap and trade CO2 payment system, this carbon sequestration capability will afford an additional revenue stream.
The MOSP process is one important payoff in the development a small high temperature nuclear reactor with a process heat output of 950C, such a reactor will be available from India sometime after 2014. This reactor is called the Compact High Temperature Reactor (CHTR) and is being designed and built in India.
In the US, the MSOP process can be a leading application of this type of reactor.
One of the most important outputs of the Molten Salt Oxidation Process (MSOP) is biochar. In traditional methods of biomass fast pyrolysis, this char is used to fire the bioreactor and is turned into CO2. When nuclear energy is used, biochar can be saved and reapplied back to the soil.
First off, biochar is charcoal created by pyrolysis of biomass, and differs from charcoal only in the sense that its primary use is not for fuel, but for biosequestration or atmospheric carbon capture and storage. Charcoal is a stable solid rich in carbon content, and thus, can be used to lock carbon in the soil. Biochar is of increasing interest because of concerns about climate change caused by emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases (GHG).
Carbon dioxide capture also ties up large amounts of oxygen and requires energy for injection (as via carbon capture and storage), whereas the biochar process breaks into the carbon dioxide cycle, thus releasing oxygen as did coal formation hundreds of millions of years ago.
If the production of biochar is tied to liquid fuel production, huge amounts of the stuff will be generated as a result of our insatiable desire for liquid fuels.
Biochar can sequester carbon in the soil for hundreds to thousands of years, like coal. Modern biochar is being developed using pyrolysis to heat biomass in the absence of oxygen in kilns and MSOP is an analogous process.
However, to the difference of coal and/or petroleum charcoal, when incorporated to the soil in stable organo-mineral aggregates does not freely accumulate in an oxygen-free and abiotic environment. This allows it to be slowly oxygenated and transformed in physically stable but chemically reactive humus, thereby acquiring interesting chemical properties such as cation exchange capacity and buffering of soil acidification. Both are precious in clay and /or nutrient-pore and/or nutrient depleted soils.
Biochar can be used to hypothetically sequester carbon on centurial or even millennial time scales. In the natural carbon cycle, plant matter decomposes rapidly after the plant dies, which emits CO2; the overall natural cycle is carbon neutral. Instead of allowing the plant matter to decompose, pyrolysis can be used to sequester some of the carbon in a much more stable form. Biochar thus removes circulating CO2 from the atmosphere and stores it in virtually permanent soil carbon pools, making it a carbon-negative process.
In places like the Rocky Mountains, where beetles have been killing off vast swathes of pine trees, the utilization of pyrolysis to char the trees instead of letting them decompose into the atmosphere would offset substantial amounts of CO2 emissions. Although some organic matter is necessary for agricultural soil to maintain its productivity, much of the agricultural waste can be turned directly into biochar, bio-oil, and syngas.
Biochar is believed to have long mean residence times in the soil. While the methods by which biochar mineralizes (turns into CO2) are not completely known, evidence from soil samples in the Amazon shows large concentrations of black carbon (biochar) remaining after they were abandoned thousands of years ago.
Lab experiments confirm a decrease in carbon mineralization with increasing temperature, so ultra high temperature charring of plant matter increases the soil residence time and long term soil benefits of high temperature biochar.
Terra preta soils are of pre-Columbian nature and were created by the local farmers and caboclos in Brazil's Amazonian basin between 450 BC and AD 950. It owes its name to its very high charcoal content, and is characterized by the presence of charcoal in high concentrations; organic matter such as plant residues, animal feces, fish and animal bones and other material; and of nutrients such as nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), calcium (Ca), zinc (Zn), manganese (Mn).
All of these elements save nitrogen will be found in the ash residuals in the MSOP process. To mitigate nitrogen depletion of the soil, cogeneration of nitrogen based fertilizer via the co-production of ammonia is possible from the gas output of the MSOP process.
Actually, I think you meant that a good whiff of oxygen will kill them. Cyanobacteria tend to be strict anaerobes. It would be difficult to use Sunlight as a power source if it quickly killed the organism. That does bring up a point though. These bacteria would not funtion well in a pond unless it was in the bottom muck area- which would impead the light aviability. It might be more suited for enclosure in anaerobic pouches or tubes that are exposed to light. Of course, making the bacteria more tolorent of oxygen may be what they accomplished. Again, that does bring up some environmental considerations.Tom Ligon wrote:Cyanobacteria are not, IIRC, spore formers. A good dose of desert sunshine will probably kill them.
OTOH, some of the rascals CAN get down into cracks in rocks and grow there for eons. In this condition they are hard to kill, but relatively immobile.
You guys do know we've been selectively breeding yeasts for high ethanol production for some ten thousand years, don't you? They have not turned the oceans to wine.
As for significantly cooling the planet by removing more CO2, while conceivable, is unlikely. After all, it took the Cyanobacteria several billion years to reduce the CO2 to current levels. It was a tongue in cheek worse case scenario, like the worst case scenario for global warming is almost always advertised, not the most likely scenario.
What is the statistics for claimed worst case scenario for global warming?. Is it 2 standard deviations, is it 10?
Dan Tibbets
To error is human... and I'm very human.