Bugs Eat Waste, Excrete Petrol
I stumbled across this extraordinary story in The Times yesterday as I trawled the Internet in my day job…
Scientists in Silicon Valley have genetically engineered bacteria to produce “renewable petroleum”.
Because petroleum is apparently just a few molecular stages away from the fatty acids excreted by yeast or E.Coli the scientists have found it easy to genetically modify the bacteria to excrete a by-product close to petrol.
Using what they call in the biofuels industry foodstock, the bacteria consume agricultural waste, basically anything that can be broken down into sugars. Avoiding corn crops that are usually food for humans is key to this process as the biofuels industry has been criticised for diverting crops from poorer people to fuel rich people’s vehicles [re: the tortilla riots in Mexico] Wheat straw, wood chips and sugar cane are expected to be used.
This whole process is not commerically viable yet but the company behind the science expects to make a demo plant operational within the next year and a commercial processing plant online by 2010.
Replacing petrol with “petrol” is rather cool but people still need to reduce their dependence on oil anyway.
on June 19th, 2008 at 8:43 pm
great site!
just wanted to let you know that I uploaded a post of yours to
http://sustain.newsladder.net/ (like Digg but centered around
sustainability). It’s a great resource and I’m trying to spread the word
about it. Please check it out and upload your posts there if you can!
also, there’s a widget if you have the room on your site. You can get one at
http://sustain.newsladder.net/tools at the bottom of the page.
take care
on June 19th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
Klara, thank you for posting and thanks for the headsup. It’s good to see new sites on sustainability and it looks like yours is another pushing the green agenda. Best of luck and stay in touch