Imagine a world where vehicles run on beer. Some might think of this as a devastating waste of good hops, but a University of Maryland (UMD) team sees a lot of promise for the idea. The team has been awarded a patent for a process that uses natural microorganisms to ferment biomass or gases into hydrocarbons. In short, they've figured out how to brew gasoline naturally.
The inventors, Professor Richard Kohn and Faculty Research Associate Dr. Seon-Woo Kim, are at the University of Maryland, had been awarded a patent for microorganisms that are ethanol-tolerant and which produce ethanol from biomass materials. The team has now been awarded a similar patent for the same process, but producing hexane and octane, the core ingredients of gasoline. In both cases, the fuels separate from the biomass and rise to the surface of a fermentation broth.
The two have worked to isolate and breed microorganisms that convert cellulostic biomass or gaseous CO2 and H2 into biofuels that include ethanol, 1-butanol, butane, or hexane. Cellulostic biomass can be any of a number of leftovers from living plant resources (trees, grain production, etc.) and are common biodegradable byproducts in manufacturing. The production of corn, for example, produces many tons of corn stalks and the production of lumber produces many tons of chips and sawdust.
The UMD team developed microorganisms that thrive on carbon dioxide, which is a byproduct of many agri-industrial processes. The fermentation process for producing fuel has been difficult to develop, but is much more energy-efficient and cost-effective over the long term than is the more common process currently used to distill corn grain and other feedstocks into ethanol. In the process created by the UMD team, microorganisms feed on hydrogen and CO2 (or biomass) and excrete hexane or octane.
The inventors, who published their work in the Journal of Theoretical Biology, hope to further improve their process, but will need to secure more funding to do so.
Sources: Journal of Theoretical Biology and U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Nos 9,217,161 and 9,193,979
Like a lot of the other 'solutions', this technology needs to prove that it can scale up and be efficient in converting the bio-mass, or else it will never be price competitive.
Taking it a bit further, I don't like to think that one day food crops might be replaced by 'fuel' crops to feed these kinds of technology, once biomass residues aren't abundant enough.
"Problem then would be CO2 emissions from burning the resulting fuel."
No. The CO2 from these fuels come from a renewable source, the grass and wood will grow again. The gasoline we put in our cars come from a source that we are depleting, i.e. we are increasing the net CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.
"Pumped irrigation water is responsible for at least half of the anthropogenic greenhouse effect."
Can you cite a source, please?
They now also manufacture ethanol from dairy waste.
Wouldnt this pretty much complete the cycle of clean energy ? or perhap we could use this Co2 for a Gaint warehouse full of plants with max effective of filtering it and have a filtering system that allows only oxygen to be release into the air ?