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Jul 27, 2009 01:55 PM | 6
Basically, all you gotta do is you put your HeliocultureTM into your scalable SolarConverterTM and, voila, out comes your SolarFuelTM liquid energy!
Or at least that’s the gist of the cryptic, jargon-laced press release that Joule Biotechnologies issued this morning promising a “game-changing” alternative-energy solution that “requires no agricultural land or fresh water” to produce “more than 20,000 gallons of renewable ethanol or hydrocarbons per acre annually.”
“A Biofuel Process to Replace All Fossil Fuels” declared Technology Review, which—like most of the stories published today—was absent information allowing an independent assessment of its feasibility. Even more puzzling was the company’s statement that Flagship Ventures has invested “substantially less than $50 million.”
Joule, founded in 2007, claims to “leverage highly engineered photosynthetic organisms to catalyze the conversion of sunlight and CO2” inside a transparent bioreactor filled with brackish water. These mysterious organisms do not need to be harvested and processed but instead continuously secrete the fuels. It sounds a lot like the recent ExxonMobil-Synthetic Genomics algae biofuel initiative, except Joule President and CEO Bill Sims told the Boston Globe their organism is definitely not algae and no other company is using it. "If I tell you what the organism is, I’m inviting everyone else to take part in a transformational, evolutionary, game-changing technology," he said.
A range of organisms beyond plants, including the protist Euglena and an odd sea slug, have the ability to photosynthesize, but few can grow as fast as algae or cyanobacteria (also known as blue-green algae).
One striking possibility is that Joule’s organism is an aquatic plant.
Todd Michael, a plant ecologist at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, who has been studying the potential of freshwater duckweed to be used as a biofuel was surprised by the new announcement. His team speculates that Joule’s organism is the duckweed Wolffia, sometimes called watermeal. The genus includes the smallest flowering plants on Earth. “I think pursuing every single bioenergy option is a good strategy,” he says.
Joule's ambitious plans are to start building a pilot plant in 2010 and a commercial-scale plant by early 2012.
Image of watermeal courtesy Christian Fischer via Wikimedia Foundation
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6 Comments
Add CommentOK! So these things will use sunshine and CO2 to feed. But where will they get the other essential nutrients from?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUsing concentrated solar heat, CO2 and water you can make fuel, fertilizer, etc directly on much less land, over parking lots or on roofs, etc
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJerryd, eco-steve just asked where the fertilizer comes from to grow the things in the first place! I for one think it is a good question.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso, requiring 'concentrated Co2' means we're looking at a system that could have us addicted to coal-fired power plants. The MOMENT some engineering type says "let's just add a Co2 extractor to bring us all the Co2 we need from the air" we are talking about adding another substantial cost stream to the venture, taking it way above the 'advertised' $50 a barrel.
Sorry guys, sometimes there's no such thing as a free lunch. I wish them well and hope they are onto something that can help with SOME of our fuel needs, maybe fed from sewerage treatment or helping in that process (and saving some of our phosphorus preparing us for peak-phosphorus) but sometimes there is no alternative to clever city design.
Fuel efficient cars are one thing: but why does the average European use less than half the oil of the average American? Answer: dense and diverse city planning, attractive "old-urbanism" and great public transport. Discover better city plans than bland old single purpose suburban sleepy suburbs, and you discover 'nega-barrels' instead of 'mega-barrels'. It's not rocket science. We built walking distance cities for 10,000 years prior to the car!
It may be useful to see what Craig Venter (world class genetist) was saying at the TED Conference last year: "We have modest goals of replacing the whole petrochemical industry and becoming a major source of energy, we think we will have fourth-generation fuels in about 18 months, with CO2 as the fuel stock." What's this fourth-generation fuel he's talking about? Biofuel alternatives to oil are third-generation. The next step is life forms that feed on CO2 and give off fuel such as methane gas as waste, according to Venter." --"Geneticist Craig Venter Wants to Create Fuel from CO2," TreeHugger.com.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYeah, 4th generation fuel production kicks, but you can be that they have to utilize concentrated CO2, because an upper limit on fuel production is the relative lack of CO2 in the air. Furthermore, I imagine you must furnish the "highly engineered photosynthetic organisms" with nutrients other than H2O and CO2.
This looks fantastic! One possibility concerning other essential nutrients is that they may recycle within the reactor. Otherwise, everything else can come from the air.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat scares me is that the organisms "continuously secrete the fuels". This is great for fuel production, but if these genetically engineered organisms escape into the environment, which is inevitable, wherever they survive will be polluted with fuel!
assuming that the claimed organisms can excret the biofuel right away - if only CO2 goes into the system as feedstock and serves as the carbon and oxygen source to form the excreted fuel -> but where is the hydrogen coming that is required to form a typical fuel consisting of C-H-O ?
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