Making Gasoline from Bacteria - Political Forum

Sebelius for VP, not Hillary · 08-01-2007, 09:40 PM

Hopefully, this research gets the funding it needs! By the way, what's hydrocarbon?

Technology Review: Making Gasoline from Bacteria

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Making Gasoline from Bacteria
A biotech startup describes how it will coax petroleum-like fuels from engineered microbes within three to five years.
By Neil Savage

Better biofuel: Stephen del Cardayre, a biochemist and LS9's vice president for research and development.
Credit: Saul Bromberger and Sandra Hoover

The biofuel of the future could well be gasoline. That's the hope of one biotech startup that on Monday described for the first time how it is coaxing bacteria into producing hydrocarbons that could be processed into fuels like those made from petroleum.

LS9, a company based in San Carlos, CA, and founded by geneticist George Church, of Harvard Medical School, and plant biologist Chris Somerville, of Stanford University, had previously said that it was working on what it calls "renewable petroleum." But at a Society for Industrial Microbiology conference on Monday, the company began speaking more openly about what it has accomplished: it has genetically engineered various bacteria, including E. coli, to custom-produce hydrocarbon chains.

To do this, the company is employing tools from the field of synthetic biology to modify the genetic pathways that bacteria, plants, and animals use to make fatty acids, one of the main ways that organisms store energy. Fatty acids are chains of carbon and hydrogen atoms strung together in a particular arrangement, with a carboxylic acid group made of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen attached at one end. Take away the acid, and you're left with a hydrocarbon that can be made into fuel. "I am very impressed with what they're doing," says James Collins, codirector of the Center for Advanced Biotechnology at Boston University. He calls the company's use of synthetic biology and systems biology to engineer hydrocarbon-producing bacteria "cutting edge."

In some cases, LS9's researchers used standard recombinant DNA techniques to insert genes into the microbes. In other cases, they redesigned known genes with a computer and synthesized them. The resulting modified bacteria make and excrete hydrocarbon molecules that are the length and molecular structure the company desires. Stephen del Cardayre, a biochemist and LS9's vice president for research and development, says the company can make hundreds of different hydrocarbon molecules. The process can yield crude oil without the contaminating sulfur that much petroleum out of the ground contains. The crude, in turn, would go to a standard refinery to be processed into automotive fuel, jet fuel, diesel fuel, or any other petroleum product that someone wanted to make.

Next year LS9 will build a pilot plant in California to test and perfect the process, and the company hopes to be selling improved biodiesel and providing synthetic biocrudes to refineries for further processing within three to five years. (See "Building Better Biofuels.") But LS9 isn't the only company in this game. Amyris Biotechnologies, of Emeryville, CA, is also using genes from plants and animals to make microbes produce designer fuels. Neil Renninger, senior vice president of development and one of the company's cofounders, says that Amyris has also created bacteria capable of supplying renewable hydrocarbon-based fuels. The main difference between the companies, Renninger says, is that while LS9 is working on a biocrude that would be processed in a refinery, Amyris is working on directly producing fuels that would need little or no further processing.

Amyris is also working on a pilot production plant that it expects to complete by the end of next year, and it also hopes to have commercial products available within three or four years. (See "A Better Biofuel.") Both companies say they want to further engineer their bacteria to be more efficient, and they're working to optimize the overall production process. "The potential for biofuels is huge, and I think theirs [LS9's] is one possible solution," Renninger says. Indeed, many technology approaches are needed, says Craig Venter, cofounder and CEO of Synthetic Genomics, of Rockland, MD, which is also applying biotechnology to fuel production. "We need a hundred, a thousand solutions, not just one," he says. "I know at least a dozen groups and labs trying to make biofuels from bacteria with sugar."

Venter's company is also working on engineering microbes to produce fuel. The company recently received a large investment from the oil giant BP to study the microbes that live on underground oil supplies; the idea is to see if the microbes can be engineered to provide cleaner fuel. Another project aims to tinker with the genome of palm trees--the most productive source of oil for biodiesel--to make them a less environmentally damaging crop.

LS9's current work uses sugar derived from corn kernels as the food source for the bacteria--the same source used by ethanol-producing yeast. To produce greater volumes of fuel, and to not have energy competing with food, both approaches will need to use cellulosic biomass, such as switchgrass, as the feedstock. Del Cardayre estimates that cellulosic biomass could produce about 2,000 gallons of renewable petroleum per acre. Producing hydrocarbon fuels is more efficient than producing ethanol, del Cardayre adds, because the former packs about 30 percent more energy per gallon. And it takes less energy to produce, too. The ethanol produced by yeast needs to be distilled to remove the water, so ethanol production requires 65 percent more energy than hydrocarbon production does.

The U.S. Department of Energy has set a goal of replacing 30 percent of current petroleum use with fuels from renewable biological sources by 2030, and del Cardayre says he feels that's easily achievable.

Aegis · 08-01-2007, 09:55 PM

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Originally Posted by W.E.B. Du Bois

Hopefully, this research gets the funding it needs! By the way, what's hydrocarbon?

Technology Review: Making Gasoline from Bacteria

The residual emissions from burning fossil fuels such as coal or oil.

Scribbler1 · 08-01-2007, 10:57 PM

Actually, it is also the fossil fuels themselves as well. Hydrocarbon is just a term for the combination of Hydrogen and Carbon in petroleum. The reason you get hydrocarbon emissions is when the fuel isn't completely burned. But the term is really meant to define what the fuel is that creates the emissions.

Scribbler1 · 08-01-2007, 11:25 PM

It has to be better than ethanol.

Scribbler1 · 08-02-2007, 07:20 AM

But ethanol is not a solution. It raises the cost of gasoline, and because it is LESS efficient than gasoline you will need more of it to go a given distance, which brings the bottom-line costs up even more.
And it has ALREADY affected the costs of food, so you can add that in as well.

My money would be on Thermal Depolymerization.

The only real solution is to radically change the way we travel, and that isn't being considered.

perdidochas · 08-02-2007, 04:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by W.E.B. Du Bois

Hopefully, this research gets the funding it needs! By the way, what's hydrocarbon?

Hydrocarbon consists of chains of carbon with hydrogen attached. Natural gas, gasoline, oil, diesel, etc., all are composed of hydrocarbons--the main difference being the number of carbons and hydrogens, and their shape (due to different ways that carbon can arrange itself).

perdidochas · 08-02-2007, 04:17 PM

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Originally Posted by MountainMike

The press and the public need to follow this story. At best, they would be able to compete against the oil giant corporations. That is very dangerous, as those corporations want their own cartels. People could get killed and disappeared over this, or patents bought up and people paid off.

Bull. The corporate giants will buy this up to make oil. If Exxon can make it's own oil, they won't have to deal with the Saudis, etc.

FRYandBENDER · 08-02-2007, 04:23 PM

I'm all for it as long as I can still pollute using this stuff.

Anyways, so....... are these guys publicly traded? I might have to look into this for investment purposes.

Scribbler1 · 08-02-2007, 07:33 PM

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Originally Posted by MountainMike

Ethanol boosts the octane rating of gas, burns hotter and cleaner. Yes, I have huge issues with AgriCorps ripping off the ethanol idea for now planting an area the size of California in Corn and driving the price of food products with corn as an ingredient and animal feed upward. Cellulosic ethanol production from Switchgrass is better, and it looks like Switchgrass is also the feedstock recommended here for this process.

What radical changes are to talking about? Mass transportation?

Mass transit is only a part of the solution, and even then the solution would be incomplete no matter what. We need to lose our longtime addiction to the auto and we must downsize the vehicles and eliminate as many non-essential trips as is practicable. We don't need a Hummer to drive one person to the convenience store. If we move to ALL small cars on the highways then the risk of fatal accidents will be spread evenly amongst all drivers. People can buy large vehicles like trucks, but only because they NEED them and not just because they can afford it.

Mandatory plastic recycling is another need. Most plastics can be reused and we should do so.

I know this flies in the face of the god-given right of Americans to do whatever the hell they feel like, but anyone over the age of 40 can see how things have been slowly and steadily getting bad. The air stinks and the cancer rates are rising. You can't eat the fish from many rivers. Landfills are approaching critical sizes and a WHOLE lot of other things.

The problems are agreed to by most, so now we might just take the hit and ADDRESS them for once.

emptypepsi · 08-05-2007, 08:42 AM

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Originally Posted by Scribbler1

The only real solution is to radically change the way we travel, and that isn't being considered.

Agreed. To most people (in regards to their everyday lives) walking is considered a chore, taking public transportation is considered "dangerous and dirty", riding a bike is thrown out - so they convince themselves that a car is somehow a 'necessity' and that it is the benchmark for common sense in transportation.