Fungi From Guts Of Herbivores Could Help Us Make Biofuel (dispatchtribunal.com) 44
hypnosec writes: Researchers have revealed through a new study that fungi from the gut of herbivores like goats, horses and sheep could be used to make biofuel. According to researchers at University of California, Santa Barbara, the fungi retrieved from these animals are capable of converting plant material into sugars that can be easily used to make biofuel and other products at the same efficiency as the best fungi engineering in the industry. Michelle O'Malley, lead author of the paper and professor of chemical engineering at the University, explains that these fungi naturally have the best possible set of enzymes for the job of breaking down biomass and as per their findings, these enzymes work together to break down stubborn plant material.
Black gold (Score:2)
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It's tough to believe a manufactured source of fuel would yet be more economical than exploiting one you just suck out of a well.
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True but this may make desert reclamation feasible or even profitable. That won't be cheap or easy but if we can reclaim 1/3 of what is now too dry to farm and use desalinated water instead of aquifers, it would make for a much different world.
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Use solar thermal and livestock manure and the desalinated brine can also act as energy storage.
You'll need a lot of space but the world's deserts have plenty of that.
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They are not worried about a replacement putting them out of business. They will run out of oil (that is affordable to recover) long before any new tech can be scaled up to the levels they are at now.
My prediction is a bad decade or so when they finally admit they can't keep up with demand and society goes into major withdrawal pains. At that point some government will need to step in a fund a set of alternatives to pick up the slack.
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As a bonus, I hear that this new gut microbe biodiesel does not smell like hamburgers nor french fries...
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As a bonus, I hear that this new gut microbe biodiesel does not smell like hamburgers nor french fries...
There is already "green diesel", which is diesel made from bio sources but instead of using transesterification via ethanol or methanol and KOH they use a distillation column essentially the same as what is used for cracking petroleum. It has none of the problems of biodiesel like excessively high gel temperature or funny smells, although I always thought the fried food smell was a feature and not a bug.
For sale... (Score:3)
I am a vegan rather than a herbivore but if anyone would like to make me an offer for my gut flora, please PM me.
Re:For sale... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yes. Paypal me £1000 and I'll send you some poo in a bag.
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I am a vegan rather than a herbivore but if anyone would like to make me an offer for my gut flora, please PM me.
It wouldn't work as you're just an omnivore pretending to be a herbivore. True herbivores have drastically different stomach and gut environments.
Riddle me this (Score:2)
Why do many environmentalist hate oil and diesel that occurred naturally on our planet, but get so excited about bio-diesel that takes up land and energy to produce that could be used for feeding people or other positive purposes?
Even the name bio-diesel is sideways and laughable. I'm going to start selling organic-oil, it's exactly like regular oil, only it makes leftist feel better when consuming it.
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Why do many environmentalist hate oil and diesel that occurred naturally on our planet, but get so excited about bio-diesel that takes up land and energy to produce that could be used for feeding people or other positive purposes?
Even the name bio-diesel is sideways and laughable.
You mean why do environmentalists like bio-diesel? They don't. But smart people realize that the industrial processes involved in petroleum extraction are a bit injurious to the environment, and the political complications are even worse. Wouldn't you rather be able to make all the petroleum products we need rather than pay money to the various Oil Barons across the world? Yes, farming and agriculture have their perils, but those can be mitigated, and it would be useful to keep some hydrocarbons in usag
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Good reply, but I expect wasted, since the OP you replied to was simply echoing a sad old meme that never was true - it's just fun to hate on leftists and way to hard to figure why.
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Actually this could be a very big deal. Xylans and similar photosynthetic by-products are very difficult to break down into simple sugars and similar. If the fungi that secrete enzymes that break down those complex compounds could be isolated and grown outside of animals,, any plant material could be used as a feedstock (think tree bark, wood, grass, kelp, etc., even possibly coal). I agree that using corn to make ethanol as a biofuel is odious; it only marginally captures more energy than is used in its
Err... (Score:2)
Fungi From Guts Of Herbivores Could Help Us Make Biofuel
When you say "us"...?
Because I produce quite enough volatile substances already, thanks.
WTF? (Score:2)
I saw something on TV when I was a kid about villages in India where they shovel all the cow shite into a tank and use the methane that comes off as fuel.
It wouldn't surprise me if someone comes up with a way of powering a ship by harnessing and/or deflecting ambient air movements. Not to mention a method of propelling projectiles by harnessing energy in tension and/or torsion of ligneous substances.
They'd probably patent them and posthumously sue Nelson & Henry V too - and win.
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villages in India where they shovel all the cow shite into a tank and use the methane that comes off as fuel.
It is called "bio gas" and is primarily used for cooking (methane) . Along with cow dung, human waste is also used . The methane generated is no different from the methane sourced from an industrial cylinder. This technology was used first in the 80's due to shortage and general unaffordability of LPG cylinders amongst the poor of India.
Gas Bags (Score:2)
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We have a planet that is very rich in very high energy-density resources like coal, oil, natural gas (which are made by applying enormous pressures and temperatures to vast amounts of biomass over millions of years) and also things like uranium.... but then we have morons who want us to skip all the high-energy-density naturally-occurring energy sources and become the industrial version of cows - choosing the lowest-energy-density least-efficient and least-economical energy sources.
Have you heard of the carbon cycle? And radioactive half-lives?
These natural high density energy sources are super convenient, but there are genuine risks and environmental impact. It can be argued that we'll be paying for the deferred costs of these impacts for a long time yet.
Biofuel on the other hand a closed cycle and far more sustainable, which in itself is a worthy goal to pursue.
That is the problem (Score:2)
Biofuel on the other hand a closed cycle and far more sustainable, which in itself is a worthy goal to pursue.
I believe you're mooching off the biosphere then. You're taking a closed cycle, and substract energy/materials from it to turn them into transportation, residential heating, industrial processes and so on. With lavish energy use and economic output like we have now, leave alone economic growth, this will quickly lead to soil depletion, water depletion, deforestation, desertification and famine.
Bio-fuel economy is like going to ancient times such as Roman Empire, medieval ages and so on : that worked out som
We could already have biofuel (Score:4, Interesting)
BP and DuPont's company Butamax has been fighting with GE Energy Venture's biofuel concern Gevo over who gets to make Butanol for years now. Butamax has got their hands on some basic patents for making the process cost-effective, based on technologies developed at public university and partially with your tax dollars. Recently the patent office declared all of the claims of one of Gevo's central patents invalid [lexisnexis.com], which is unfortunate for you and I because Butamax is not actually trying to sell us fuel and Gevo is.
We therefore already have the technology to make a 1:1 replacement for gasoline [wikipedia.org] which can be made from any organic matter, by bacteria, and we could be running our cars on it right now if only our government had not become primarily a tool for bludgeoning common sense soundly about the neck and head for the sake of profit.
NO! No bio-fuels, bio-fuels are bad (Score:4, Interesting)
I keep hearing about how we can use "agricultural waste" to make bio-fuel but that is a lie, there is no agricultural waste. What is this "waste" exactly? What do you think happens to it now?
This "waste" is usually described as cornstalks and other chaff made from the growing of (obviously) corn and other food crops. I grew up on a dairy farm and we'd use those corn stalks as bedding for the cattle, so they'd have a warm and dry place to rest. After those cornstalks are soaked with cattle manure it is collected and spread on the fields. Those corn stalks return vital nutrients to the soil, control erosion, and hold that manure (and other fertilizers) in place for the next crop.
I suspect a lot of people that live in high rise apartments, that never saw a cow that wasn't served on a plate, think that these corn stalks are hauled off to put in landfills. If we convert cornstalks to fuel then we are going to see another dust bowl in the Midwest.
I suspect that some vegan would like to point out how we should not be eating meat or drinking milk anyway, we don't need to bed cattle with cornstalks or feed that cattle corn. Okay then, if we harvest all that corn to eat, and haul off the stalks for fuel, then what is holding the soil in place? What is going to keep that topsoil from just blowing away and get carried out to sea by rivers? Answer, the corn stalks that should not be taken out of the field.
I read an interesting paper on how we could mine basalt, grind it up, and spread on farm land to return nutrients to the field and fix carbon out of the air into the soil. That's something I can support. Use nuclear power to produce that basalt fertilizer rather than the fossil fueled lime kilns we use now, we'd go from carbon positive to carbon negative. We'd also be building up topsoil rather than hauling it away to make fuel. This fuel, by the way, could also be produced from nuclear power in a carbon neutral or perhaps even carbon negative way.
I'm not even a agronomist or anything like that. I'm just an Iowa farm boy that grew up to write code. Even I see this as an environmental disaster. Do these bio-fuel people even talk to farmers? Did they not do some sort of environmental impact study on removing vital erosion control material, like corn stalks, from fields? Perhaps they did do their homework and I'm missing something important. If so then I'd like someone to point out what I'm missing.
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You grew up on a diary farm. But generally, the fields where they grow wheat and corn are not close to the places with cattle in stables. I've wondered about what they do with the giant rolls of straw that you see on the fields in autumn in places where there is no cattle (experience in Europe). It may be economic to truck them to livestock farms, although I suspect that some of it is burnt in coal power plants to greenwash electricity. But certainly it's not economic to ship it back once it's soaked with m
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In most cases, those aren't "rolls of straw". They're rolls of hay and they're being left in the field to ferment, thereby increasing their nutritave value to the ruminants they will be fed to. Look up silage.
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I do not think that producing biofuel is such an disaster, of course depending on how you implement it. In Germany quite a few farmers already produce biogas using large fermenters on their farm, most often then to directly use it for electricity and heat production, as pressurizing it is too costly. But well, all you are doing is pumping some cubic metres of liquid manure and some other decomposable materials in a huge tank and let anaerobic digestion do their work. As it turns out this even improves the f
Actually, yes (Score:1)
I keep hearing about how we can use "agricultural waste" to make bio-fuel but that is a lie, there is no agricultural waste. What is this "waste" exactly? What do you think happens to it now?
This "waste" is usually described as cornstalks and other chaff made from the growing of (obviously) corn and other food crops. I grew up on a dairy farm and we'd use those corn stalks as bedding for the cattle, so they'd have a warm and dry place to rest. After those cornstalks are soaked with cattle manure it is collected and spread on the fields. Those corn stalks return vital nutrients to the soil, control erosion, and hold that manure (and other fertilizers) in place for the next crop.
I suspect a lot of people that live in high rise apartments, that never saw a cow that wasn't served on a plate, think that these corn stalks are hauled off to put in landfills. If we convert cornstalks to fuel then we are going to see another dust bowl in the Midwest.
You have a point, but it also falls short on the fact that energy can be collected from biomass while the nutrients are recycled into the soil. This is what anaerobic digestion offers, eg. how biogas is produced. Look it up, it's awesome stuff!
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The nutrients can be returned but by breaking down the straw the erosion control properties are lost.
Bio-fuels are a waste of time. We can do better with nuclear power driving a synthetic fuel process. The sooner we learn that the better.
Let's assume we can make bio-fuel from straw without the problems of reducing the quality of the soil. Then we get back to the problem of having to farm much more land to get enough sun to make our food and our fuel. That means plowing up even more land, forced irrigati
Ob (Score:2)
Pull my hoof.