{"id":22,"date":"2008-06-27T18:02:28","date_gmt":"2008-06-27T16:02:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.psyched.be\/wordpress\/?p=22"},"modified":"2013-12-15T00:22:49","modified_gmt":"2013-12-14T22:22:49","slug":"scientists-find-bugs-that-eat-waste-and-excrete-petrol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.psyched.be\/wordpress\/science\/scientists-find-bugs-that-eat-waste-and-excrete-petrol\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists find bugs that eat waste and excrete petrol"},"content":{"rendered":"

Silicon Valley is experimenting with bacteria that have been genetically altered to provide ‘renewable petroleum’<\/h2>\n

\u201cTen years ago I could never have imagined I\u2019d be doing this,\u201d says Greg Pal, 33, a former software executive, as he squints into the late afternoon Californian sun. \u201cI mean, this is essentially agriculture, right? But the people I talk to \u2013 especially the ones coming out of business school \u2013 this is the one hot area everyone wants to get into.\u201d
\n\"Some<\/p>\n

Some of the complex lab equipment used to make some new strains of genetically modified bacteria<\/p>\n

He means bugs. To be more precise: the genetic alteration of bugs \u2013 very, very small ones \u2013 so that when they feed on agricultural waste such as woodchips or wheat straw, they do something extraordinary. They excrete crude oil.
\n\"Greg<\/p>\n

Greg Pal, Senior Director of the LS9 Biofuels Company<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Unbelievably, this is not science fiction. Mr Pal holds up a small beaker of bug excretion that could, theoretically, be poured into the tank of the giant Lexus SUV next to us. Not that Mr Pal is willing to risk it just yet. He gives it a month before the first vehicle is filled up on what he calls \u201crenewable petroleum\u201d. After that, he grins, \u201cit\u2019s a brave new world\u201d.
\n\"Some<\/p>\n

Some diesel fuel produced by genetically modified bugs<\/p>\n

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. \u201cAll of us here \u2013 everyone in this company and in this industry, are aware of the urgency,\u201d Mr Pal says.<\/p>\n

What is most remarkable about what they are doing is that instead of trying to reengineer the global economy \u2013 as is required, for example, for the use of hydrogen fuel \u2013 they are trying to make a product that is interchangeable with oil. The company claims that this \u201cOil 2.0\u201d will not only be renewable but also carbon negative \u2013 meaning that the carbon it emits will be less than that sucked from the atmosphere by the raw materials from which it is made.<\/p>\n

LS9 has already convinced one oil industry veteran of its plan: Bob Walsh, 50, who now serves as the firm\u2019s president after a 26-year career at Shell, most recently running European supply operations in London. \u201cHow many times in your life do you get the opportunity to grow a multi-billion-dollar company?\u201d he asks. It is a bold statement from a man who works in a glorified cubicle in a San Francisco industrial estate for a company that describes itself as being \u201cprerevenue\u201d.<\/p>\n

Inside LS9\u2019s cluttered laboratory \u2013 funded by $20 million of start-up capital from investors including Vinod Khosla, the Indian-American entrepreneur who co-founded Sun Micro-systems \u2013 Mr Pal explains that LS9\u2019s bugs are single-cell organisms, each a fraction of a billionth the size of an ant. They start out as industrial yeast or nonpathogenic strains of E. coli,<\/em> but LS9 modifies them by custom-de-signing their DNA. \u201cFive to seven years ago, that process would have taken months and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars,\u201d he says. \u201cNow it can take weeks and cost maybe $20,000.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because crude oil (which can be refined into other products, such as petroleum or jet fuel) is only a few molecular stages removed from the fatty acids normally excreted by yeast or E. coli<\/em> during fermentation, it does not take much fiddling to get the desired result.<\/p>\n

For fermentation to take place you need raw material, or feedstock, as it is known in the biofuels industry. Anything will do as long as it can be broken down into sugars, with the byproduct ideally burnt to produce electricity to run the plant.<\/p>\n

The company is not interested in using corn as feedstock, given the much-publicised problems created by using food crops for fuel, such as the tortilla inflation that recently caused food riots in Mexico City. Instead, different types of agricultural waste will be used according to whatever makes sense for the local climate and economy: wheat straw in California, for example, or woodchips in the South.<\/p>\n

Using genetically modified bugs for fermentation is essentially the same as using natural bacteria to produce ethanol, although the energy-intensive final process of distillation is virtually eliminated because the bugs excrete a substance that is almost pump-ready.<\/p>\n

The closest that LS9 has come to mass production is a 1,000-litre fermenting machine, which looks like a large stainless-steel jar, next to a wardrobe-sized computer connected by a tangle of cables and tubes. It has not yet been plugged in. The machine produces the equivalent of one barrel a week and takes up 40 sq ft of floor space.<\/p>\n

However, to substitute America\u2019s weekly oil consumption of 143 million barrels, you would need a facility that covered about 205 square miles, an area roughly the size of Chicago.<\/p>\n

That is the main problem: although LS9 can produce its bug fuel in laboratory beakers, it has no idea whether it will be able produce the same results on a nationwide or even global scale.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur plan is to have a demonstration-scale plant operational by 2010 and, in parallel, we\u2019ll be working on the design and construction of a commercial-scale facility to open in 2011,\u201d says Mr Pal, adding that if LS9 used Brazilian sugar cane as its feedstock, its fuel would probably cost about $50 a barrel.<\/p>\n

Are Americans ready to be putting genetically modified bug excretion in their cars? \u201cIt\u2019s not the same as with food,\u201d Mr Pal says. \u201cWe\u2019re putting these bacteria in a very isolated container: their entire universe is in that tank. When we\u2019re done with them, they\u2019re destroyed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Besides, he says, there is greater good being served. \u201cI have two children, and climate change is something that they are going to face. The energy crisis is something that they are going to face. We have a collective responsibility to do this.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Silicon Valley is experimenting with bacteria that have been genetically altered to provide ‘renewable petroleum’ \u201cTen years ago I could never have imagined I\u2019d be doing this,\u201d says Greg Pal, 33, a former software executive, as he squints into the late afternoon Californian sun. \u201cI mean, this is essentially agriculture, right? But the people I talk to \u2013 especially the ones coming out of business school \u2013 this is the one hot area everyone wants to get into.\u201d Some of the complex lab equipment used…<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/ph7OQR-m","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.psyched.be\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.psyched.be\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.psyched.be\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.psyched.be\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.psyched.be\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.psyched.be\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.psyched.be\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.psyched.be\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.psyched.be\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}