11–20 of 94 posts
"The leaf hasn’t lived up to its promise, Nocera said, because the world isn’t ready for hydrogen fuel." And probably won't be for transportation because battery tech is improving. But if this proves to be an effective way to produce liquid biofuel that can replace gasoline/diesel with simple engine conversions, then we can repurpose our existing liquid fuel infrastructure and existing cars instead of building a whol…
FWIW, “This isn’t solving your CO2 problem,” he said. ”I’m taking CO2 out of the air, you burn it and you put the CO2 back. So it’s carbon neutral. I’m not going to reverse 400 ppm of CO2. But you’re not going to use any more stuff out of the ground.”
Except that we could a) store the alcohol that's produced, or b) find a way to convert the alcohol or biomass into something else (e.g. plastics).
(A Brazilian chemical company markets it as a green product http://www.braskem.com/site.aspx/Im-greenTM-Polyethylene )
Any mechanism to capture CO2 emissions is a huge win for the environment. What is missing is an assessment of cost. If this is economically feasible at some point in time in the future, then goodbye oil and coal. Open question is how to ensure these bio-engineered organisms don't seep into the environment and trigger some unintended consequences. There needs to be some kill switch in there as well.
He states that the purpose is not carbon capture but energy production, as all carbon consumed will be released upon combustion.
Any mechanism to capture CO2 emissions is a huge win for the environment. What is missing is an assessment of cost. If this is economically feasible at some point in time in the future, then goodbye oil and coal. Open question is how to ensure these bio-engineered organisms don't seep into the environment and trigger some unintended consequences. There needs to be some kill switch in there as well.
He states that the purpose is not carbon capture but energy production, as all carbon consumed will be released upon combustion.
Yay. Now we don't need plants to reduce the greenhouse gas CO2. We just need to turn loose this bacterium and build an economy around alcohol fuels. No need for systems thinking that involves the environment when we can create a bacterium which is more efficient in one aspect of the environment it is replacing. So long as we can extend this reductionist framework to provide us with the nitrogen we need. And the globa…
SKINNER Well, I was wrong. The lizards are a godsend.
LISA But isn't that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we're overrun by lizards?
SKINNER No problem. We simply unleash wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the lizards.
LISA But aren't the snakes even worse?
SKINNER Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat.
LISA But then we're stuck with gorillas!
SKINNER No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.
The headline, while accurate, doesn't really describe the breakthrough here. In itself, it's not surprising that sunlight, hydrogen from water and CO2 could be put together to make biomass. That's pretty much what plants (and many natural bacteria) do already. The novel aspect of these bacteria is that they apparently do the job 10x more efficiently than natural organisms.
This makes me wonder why this solution was not found by evolution directly.
The headline, while accurate, doesn't really describe the breakthrough here. In itself, it's not surprising that sunlight, hydrogen from water and CO2 could be put together to make biomass. That's pretty much what plants (and many natural bacteria) do already. The novel aspect of these bacteria is that they apparently do the job 10x more efficiently than natural organisms.
> The novel aspect of these bacteria is that they apparently do the job 10x more efficiently than natural organisms. This makes me wonder why this solution was not found by evolution directly.
In nature we see a lot of "good enough" because there are other costs and higher-priority bottlenecks.
The headline, while accurate, doesn't really describe the breakthrough here. In itself, it's not surprising that sunlight, hydrogen from water and CO2 could be put together to make biomass. That's pretty much what plants (and many natural bacteria) do already. The novel aspect of these bacteria is that they apparently do the job 10x more efficiently than natural organisms.
> The novel aspect of these bacteria is that they apparently do the job 10x more efficiently than natural organisms. This makes me wonder why this solution was not found by evolution directly.
The headline, while accurate, doesn't really describe the breakthrough here. In itself, it's not surprising that sunlight, hydrogen from water and CO2 could be put together to make biomass. That's pretty much what plants (and many natural bacteria) do already. The novel aspect of these bacteria is that they apparently do the job 10x more efficiently than natural organisms.
> The novel aspect of these bacteria is that they apparently do the job 10x more efficiently than natural organisms. This makes me wonder why this solution was not found by evolution directly.