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Solein – Protein out of thin air

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Re: Solein – Protein out of thin air

#61

Post by wizofaus »

drjasonharrison wrote: post #59
wizofaus wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 harve…

Well I wasn't proposing we could solve climate change just planting trees (though I've seen that exact proposition made before). Genetically engineered trees that have a much faster CO2 processing time perhaps...

Re: Solein – Protein out of thin air

#62

Post by washbrain »

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...

As someone who manages hundreds of acres of forest - most trees won't live that long because we'll harvest them or they'll die to disease and wildfire.

Reforesting an area would be carbon negative, and eventually the first will saturate. It's much much more carbon negative to produce biochar, biotar, or mass timber buildings.

Re: Solein – Protein out of thin air

#63

Post by sitkack »

drjasonharrison wrote: post #59
wizofaus wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 harve…

If something spills, do you soak it up with a sponge?

Re: Solein – Protein out of thin air

#64

Post by philipkglass »

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…

This report finds 10% as a lower bound and 60% as an upper bound for the energy efficiency of hydrogen oxidizing bacteria:

"The energy efficiency of carbon dioxide fixation by a hydrogen-oxidizing bacterium"

https://sci-hub.ru/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2013.04.153

The authors found a tradeoff between efficiency and growth rates. The highest efficiency came with the slowest growth rate. But they concluded that 50% efficiency was achievable at practical growth rates. Keep in mind also that potatoes only contain about 10% protein by dry weight while the bacteria cultivated to make single cell protein can contain 50% protein by dry weight. Soybeans are about 40% protein.

Re: Solein – Protein out of thin air

#65

Post by DesertVarnish »

washbrain wrote: post #49
Animats wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure it does. The competition is growing soybeans, which are really cheap. Are they going to beat that? Most of the high-tech food schemes produce some high-value product. This produces a very low value product. It's Hamburger Helper. Cost dominates.

The competition would be carbon neutral pesticide free soybeans, which I'm not sure are readily available? Soybeans also typically use energy intensive nitrogen fertilizers, which I'm not sure this process requires. (It might, not sure.) Also, soybeans need to be shipped from fertile areas. This could be produced in situ in infertile areas. I'm not saying it's a panacea, but it has some benefits over traditional inte…

Is it actually standard practice to use nitrogen fertilizers with soybeans? Soy is a nitrogen fixer and I've read that nitrogen fertilizers often reduce yields for soybeans because it interferes with nodulation and undermines that plant's nitrogen fixing capacities.

Re: Solein – Protein out of thin air

#66

Post by nradov »

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…

And yet animals (even herbivores) kill other animals all the time. This concern over the cruelty of killing livestock for food is such a weird human conceit.

Re: Solein – Protein out of thin air

#67

Post by washbrain »

DesertVarnish wrote: post #65
washbrain wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The competition would be carbon neutral pesticide free soybeans, which I'm not sure are readily available? Soybeans also typically use energy intensive nitrogen fertilizers, which I'm not sure this process requires. (It might, not sure.) Also, soybeans need to be shipped from fertile areas. This could be produced in situ in infertile areas. I'm not saying it's a panacea, but it has some benefits over traditional inte…

Is it actually standard practice to use nitrogen fertilizers with soybeans? Soy is a nitrogen fixer and I've read that nitrogen fertilizers often reduce yields for soybeans because it interferes with nodulation and undermines that plant's nitrogen fixing capacities.

Oh, great question actually. I mostly know wheat farmers, so that's the model that I have in my head, but yeah it would make sense they fix nitrogen.

Re: Solein – Protein out of thin air

#68

Post by SnowHill9902 »

TylerE wrote: post #42
otikik wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, "heavy water" is a molecule different than "usual" water. One shouldn't drink heavy water. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water

Actually according to that article it’s perfectly safe to drink in moderate quantities, as long as it doesn’t make up a large portion of your Total intake over an extended period. It isn’t radioactive

Fucks up your enzyme kinetics and is much more expensive than Fiji. Would not recommend.

Re: Solein – Protein out of thin air

#69

Post by elil17 »

blacksmith_tb wrote: post #22
namuol wrote: post #12

From 2020, so not sure how up to date this is: “Solar Foods is a Finland-based start-up company that utilises CO2 captured from air, water and some minerals as sole raw materials to produce a protein powder using renewable electricity. Branded as Solein®, the product is a microbial protein (also referred to as single cell protein, SCP) obtained by growing proprietary bacteria harvested from nature, in specially desig…

Hmm, obviously cyanobacteria like Spirulina[1] "utilize CO2 captured from air" along with "water and some minerals" and sunlight to make sugars and proteins which people can eat. Not sure I'd describe that as 'fermentation' though if you do anything in a big vat it's a bioreactor and not just... a big vat, apparently. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirulina_(dietary_supplement)

This doesn’t use sunlight. It uses hydrogen gas as the energy carrier.

Re: Solein – Protein out of thin air

#70

Post by seltzered_ »

helpfulmandrill wrote: post #41

I think George Monbiot recently ate a pancake made from this stuff https://twitter.com/Solar_Foods/status/1520023732122750976

I'm not sure what to make of this yet, but yeah, solein is by solar foods which George Monbiot wrote about in 2020 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/08/lab-gr... .

The questions for me are what the input costs really are (from energy material sourcing all the way to distribution). I've seen a bunch of critiques of cellular ag from the 'regenerative' spaces (which make good arguments around monocrop farming and impacts on rancher livelihoods (particularly those trying to do more indigenous practices)), and also provocations of inquiry such as:

Gabriel Rosenberg: https://bearistotle.substack.com/p/labriculture-now-4f1

Isha Datar: https://mobile.twitter.com/IshaDatar/status/1441070303786913...

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