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Solein – Protein out of thin air

solein.com

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Re: Solein – Protein out of thin air

#71

Post by adrianmonk »

Animats wrote: post #43
clomond wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to be incredibly nit-picky, but the costs of the product right now don’t matter nearly as much as the ability to scale production and variable unit costs. As a ‘hard tech’, they need to work themselves through the technology readiness framework before the cost of a particular material even tells you anything of value.

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.

They didn't say the costs don't matter. They said the costs don't matter right now. Those are two very different things.

Re: Solein – Protein out of thin air

#74

Post by fabian2k »

> Solein® is made from natural single-cell organisms, which are grown in a fermentation process. Water is split from the air with renewable electricity into hydrogen and oxygen. The cells are fed CO2 from the air, hydrogen and mineral nutrients.

There is no nitrogen mentioned in this explanation. You cannot make amino acids or proteins without nitrogen. These organism either have to be able to do nitrogen-fixation from the air, which is a really difficult and energy-intensive process or the nitrogen has to come from some growth medium. It certainly doesn't make a good first impression that they "forgot" such an important part in this description.

In general the interesting part of such a scheme is how much energy it uses. Converting CO2 to organic molecules and nitrogen-fixation are very energy-intensive processes, the problem isn't that we can't do this but that the amount of energy is incredibly expensive compared to using photosynthesis in plants.

Re: Solein – Protein out of thin air

#75

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

Like other commenters I found this marketing website pretty nauseating. The Wikipedia article on "Hydrogen oxidizing bacteria" has better info and mentions how Solar Foods is using knallgas bacteria at the bottom:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_oxidizing_bacteria

Re: Solein – Protein out of thin air

#76

Post by knodi123 »

Animats wrote: post #24

Most vegetation is made out of air and water. Mostly air. C, O, and N come from air. H comes from water, and some of that comes from water in air. The inputs from dirt are under 5% of plant mass. They have to be, or farms would dig holes in the ground. Feynman talk on this.[1] So, with that out of the way, what does this company actually have? * They have a cool web site with no useful info. * They have another web s…

> Most vegetation is made out of air and water. Mostly air.

Most vegetation is water. Vegetables, at least, are about 90% water. https://www.myfooddata.com/articles/vegetables-high-in-water...

So yeah, except for the water content, most of the molecular weight is atoms that come from air- but the water content is *HUGE*.

Re: Solein – Protein out of thin air

#77

Post by efa »

tambourine_man wrote: post #13

I need more details than that, but looks very interesting: “HOW SOLEIN IS MADE Solein® is made from natural single-cell organisms, which are grown in a fermentation process. Water is split from the air with renewable electricity into hydrogen and oxygen. The cells are fed CO2 from the air, hydrogen and mineral nutrients. These microorganisms are then able to make amino acids, carbohydrates, lipids (fats), and vitamin…

It's is 2022! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green#Plot

Re: Solein – Protein out of thin air

#78

Post by dane-pgp »

Animats wrote: post #24

Most vegetation is made out of air and water. Mostly air. C, O, and N come from air. H comes from water, and some of that comes from water in air. The inputs from dirt are under 5% of plant mass. They have to be, or farms would dig holes in the ground. Feynman talk on this.[1] So, with that out of the way, what does this company actually have? * They have a cool web site with no useful info. * They have another web s…

> * It's a fermentation process, so it takes heat and water, not just air.

To be fair, if the heat is from solar or wind energy, and the water is collected from rain (which I guess includes river water?) then those are also "out of thin air".

Or I suppose you could say that air containing rain is not as thin (i.e. contains more mass) than "normal" air, or that "air" only refers to the gases, not the rain falling through it, in which case they'd have to rely on moisture vaporators, like in Star Wars.

Re: Solein – Protein out of thin air

#79

Post by hombre_fatal »

nradov wrote: post #66
PretzelPirate wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Well, humans have the choice. Likewise, pointing out that rape is common in the animal kingdom isn't very convincing license for humans to rape.

Re: Solein – Protein out of thin air

#80

Post by Ope_Welp »

While most vegetation is air and water, the ability to manipulate this into a wide variety of products is pretty incredible.

Leave it to one of humanity's oldest food prep techniques: fermentation. Also, not all fermentation requires heat. It certainly will generate heat as it ferments. Perhaps it can be captured and redistributed into its manufacturing.

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