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Solein – Protein out of thin air

solein.com

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Re: Solein – Protein out of thin air

#51

Post by washbrain »

gpcr1949 wrote: post #40
sacred_numbers wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The carbon source is CO2 in the air. Digesting the food creates CO2, which completes the cycle of carbon neutrality.

Yes, I read a bit on this (apparently real after all) business and I saw CO2 is the carbon source. It just confused me the promotional website does not even mention CO2. When they called Solein carbon neutral, I assumed they are talking about the product and process, not the entire cycle (in the same way you might call planting trees CO2-emission negative), though this makes sense. In any case, I still find it to be…

Planting a tree is carbon neutral if you do nothing to sequester the carbon. It's negative in the short term, but neutral over the life of the tree (more or less).

Re: Solein – Protein out of thin air

#53

Post by wizofaus »

washbrain wrote: post #51
gpcr1949 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I read a bit on this (apparently real after all) business and I saw CO2 is the carbon source. It just confused me the promotional website does not even mention CO2. When they called Solein carbon neutral, I assumed they are talking about the product and process, not the entire cycle (in the same way you might call planting trees CO2-emission negative), though this makes sense. In any case, I still find it to be…

Planting a tree is carbon neutral if you do nothing to sequester the carbon. It's negative in the short term, but neutral over the life of the tree (more or less).

Trees live long enough that that "short term" can still be 100s of years, and buying ourselves 100 years is probably the best we can hope for anyway at this point. And trees are capable of automatically spawning new trees, so a self-sustaining growing tree population should surely count as carbon negative...

Re: Solein – Protein out of thin air

#55

Post by drjasonharrison »

PretzelPirate wrote: post #47
OrvalWintermute wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By using the term cruelty-free, are you describing dense, commercial feedlot animal production only, or are you including all types of animal husbandry and meat acquisition, including hunting?

> all types of animal husbandry and meat acquisition, including hunting? Clearly it’s cruel to kill an animal even through hunting. The animal doesn’t want to be shot/stabbed/etc…

Or transported on noisy truck without food, water, or air heating/cooling, for many hours or days.

Re: Solein – Protein out of thin air

#58

Post by gus_massa »

philipkglass wrote: post #28
2Gkashmiri wrote: post #8

>Seriously. Solein® is a unique single-cell protein made with a fully natural fermentation process. Using just air and electricity as its primary raw materials, Solein is the most sustainable protein in the world. so..... instead of "wasting" time in spending water and soil and fertilizer into making plants that use solar energy to create "food", we skip that step and just use electricity that is generated from solar…

New solar farms use panels that can achieve light-to-electricity efficiency over 20% [1]. Electrolytic splitting of water to produce hydrogen is about 80% efficient [2] for a combined efficiency of ~17%. Growing potatoes -- a calorie dense but not particularly protein rich crop -- converts only about 1.7% of sunlight to edible calories [3]. The intuition behind cultivating hydrogen oxidizing bacteria for single cell…

> can be an order of magnitude more productive per hectare for sunlight-to-protein than growing crops in fields.

But what's the efficiency of converting Hydrogen (and CO2) to carbohydrates? Pulling number out of thin air, I'll be very happy if it's 10% or 20% [1]. So from solar to carbohydrates they get 20%*80%*¿20%?=3% that is the double of potatoes, not an order of magnitude better.

And the conversion to proteins is even harder. They need a microorganism that can fixate Nitrogen from the air (that is very costly for the microorganism) or use a fertilizer like ammonia nitrate (that use a lot of energy in an industria plant).

[1] For an easy, one step organic reaction in the lab, the efficiency is like 60%-70%. It varies a lot, but never expect something like 99%. In the lab, most reactions use a brute force approach like boiling it in acid, instead of using a specialized enzyme. On the other hand, the transformation form H2 and CO2 to carbohydrates has like 10 or 20 steps, and each step has a small lose. I'd be happy with a global 20% efficiency, but perhaps I'm too optimistic.

Re: Solein – Protein out of thin air

#59

Post by drjasonharrison »

wizofaus wrote: post #53
washbrain wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Planting a tree is carbon neutral if you do nothing to sequester the carbon. It's negative in the short term, but neutral over the life of the tree (more or less).

Trees live long enough that that "short term" can still be 100s of years, and buying ourselves 100 years is probably the best we can hope for anyway at this point. And trees are capable of automatically spawning new trees, so a self-sustaining growing tree population should surely count as carbon negative...

...and then the drought, followed by the fire...

The amount of carbon in the atmosphere, that used to be underground in coal, oil, and gas.

More than 170 gigatons. (approximately, this is just the 40% higher concentration than historical high point, based on 412 ppm co2 in atmosphere vs 300 ppm historical high point, back of the envelope).

This seems like a lot of land, a lot of trees, and would have to include harvesting and storing the trees after 100 years.

Re: Solein – Protein out of thin air

#60

Post by sitkack »

gus_massa wrote: post #58
philipkglass wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New solar farms use panels that can achieve light-to-electricity efficiency over 20% [1]. Electrolytic splitting of water to produce hydrogen is about 80% efficient [2] for a combined efficiency of ~17%. Growing potatoes -- a calorie dense but not particularly protein rich crop -- converts only about 1.7% of sunlight to edible calories [3]. The intuition behind cultivating hydrogen oxidizing bacteria for single cell…

> can be an order of magnitude more productive per hectare for sunlight-to-protein than growing crops in fields. But what's the efficiency of converting Hydrogen (and CO2) to carbohydrates? Pulling number out of thin air, I'll be very happy if it's 10% or 20% [1]. So from solar to carbohydrates they get 20%*80%*¿20%?=3% that is the double of potatoes, not an order of magnitude better. And the conversion to proteins i…

Would Alpha fold help genetically engineer new ways to efficiently process CHON into food-stuffs?

https://alphafold.com/search/text/nitrogen

I think the cool part of using solar panels to have an electrified process is that you can use non-farmland (Bill Gates is buying it all :), could use less water, also produces electricity.

In the perfect future, we are all sucking on tubes of atmospheric liquid cheese product. From pipe to pipe.

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