Bacteria Into Oil? How Farting Cows May Have Solved America’s Energy Woes
The folks at Bell Plantations in Tifton, Georgia are developing a way to convert bacteria into hydrocarbons. By genetically manipulating the bacteria, they believe they can produce different molecular chains to produce the basis for gasoline, diesel, propane and a variety of other hydrocarbon fuels.
In essence, they will be able to turn bacteria into oil – in a matter of months, rather than the millions of years it takes for fossils to degrade into usable fuels.
And proprietor J.C. Bell got the idea standing on a hill where cows were farting.
“I was standing downwind from one of our herds of cows,” Bell told me in a recent interview. “And it dawned on me that they can produce something quite well, and it all stinks. That stink is methane – natural gas. Methane is CH4. It’s a hydrocarbon. I started researching that and developing it in my little facility, and that led to the conclusion that we have the ability, if we can use bacterial action, to convert biomass into hydrocarbon.”
That’s what cows, termites and lots of other things do. They eat biomass and turn it into hydrocarbon.
[...]
Bell Plantations plans to clone the bacteria and genetically manipulate the biomass to produce hydrocarbon in the various forms needed to supply the market they anticipate. Present plans call for 500 nationwide production facilities within 18 months, which would give Bell Plantations the capacity to produce up to 500,000 barrels a day within two years.
Anyway, back to the topic….
I wonder if this technology will scale? Bobbo makes a good point about this but I suspect that those plants are prototypes.
I also wonder about the ecological impact. Would I want one of those plants in my neighborhood? What are the by-products? Would it smell like wrong end of a horse? I am not really qualified to judge that but someone around here may be.
“[Ed. Personal attacks on other bloggers without topic contribution is a violation of posting guidelines.]”
So, personal attacks on other users are OK as long as there is topic contribution? Inquiring minds…
#13 – The problem with horses was what to do with the horse shit. I was thinking perhaps we could feed it to cigar smokers as breath freshener.
Also, where the fuck is the sense of humor around here? These aren’t personal attacks. We aren’t that thin skinned are we? This is the Internet FFS.
[There's a difference between making a clever retort and being an asshole. - ed.]
I never saw a price on the barrel.
Sounds better than corn fuel.
Cheney will put an end to it though, when he goes back to work for big oil.
#23 – He never stopped working for big oil.
To the dude that didn’t know it this is biofuel.
The problem with biofuel is it reduces food production and it removes organic matter from fields which needs to be there for many reasons.
Even a thousand years back this kind of crap was known to encourage soil erosion, reduce water retention which made the land dry out worse, and reduce long range productivety of the land for several differnt reasons.
That so many modern people don’t know what was once common knowledge doesn’t say much for humans.
Of course many people did it anyway which is why many lands which were once bountiful and held powerful civilizations now don’t.
When the mastermind behind the plan says “That stink is methane” it should set off a few alarm bells. I thought the fact that methane was odorless was common knowledge. The smell commonly associated with methane is mercaptan which is a byproduct of animal digestion and also happens to be added to petrochemically derived methane so that end users can detect leaks. You can wikipedia it if you don’t believe me.
Didn’t they do this in mad max? Yeah it was pigs, but I bet a cow’s fart could be just as potent
I’ll tell you, with all the BBQ beans I had this weekend, I could give that cow a run for his money. Stand back and don’t pull my finger…
In other stories on this subject, JC Bell points specifically to waste product from lumber production.
A wood lot can generate mountains of sawdust. I can remember riding in the backseat at night passing the wood lots along US 84 in South Georgia and seeing the huge pyramid shaped incenerators burning the sawdust.
At some wood yards, they would use the heat to boil water to power turbines for electricity to power the saws. Other yards just burned it to get it out of the way.
As for the carbon footprinters out there, the system is closed cycle. Pulpwood pine tree absorbs light Co2 and water and creates biomass. We turn biomass into fuel. Burn fuel, release CO2 and repeat.
No cows were injured in the production of this post.