University of Hawai’i Professor Pengchen “Patrick” Fu developed an innovative technology, to produce high amounts of ethanol with modified cyanobacterias, as a new feedstock for ethanol, without entering in conflict with the food and feed-production .

Fu has developed strains of cyanobacteria — one of the components of pond scum — that feed on atmospheric carbon dioxide, and produce ethanol as a waste product.

He has done it both in his laboratory under fluorescent light and with sunlight on the roof of his building. Sunlight works better, he said.

It has a lot of appeal and potential. Turning waste into something useful is a good thing. And the blue-green-algae needs only sun and wast- recycled from the sugar-cane-industry, to grow and to produce directly more and more ethanol. With this solution, the sugarcane-based ethanol-industry in Brazil and other tropical regions will get a second way, to produce more biocombustible for the worldmarket.

The technique may need adjusting to increase how much ethanol it yields, but it may be a new technology-challenge in the near future.

The process was patented by Fu and UH in January, but there’s still plenty of work to do to bring it to a commercial level. The team of Fu foundet just the start-up LA WAHIE BIOTECH INC. with headquarter in Hawaii and branch-office in Brazil.

PLAN FOR AN EXPERIMENTAL ETHANOL PLANT

Fu figures his team is two to three years from being able to build a full-scale
ethanol plant, and they are looking for investors or industry-partners (jointventure).

He is fine-tuning his research to find different strains of blue-green algae that will produce even more ethanol, and that are more tolerant of high levels of ethanol. The system permits, to “harvest” continuously ethanol – using a membrane-system- and to pump than the blue-green-algae-solution in the Photo-Bio-Reactor again.

Fu started out in chemical engineering, and then began the study of biology. He has studied in China, Australia, Japan and the United States, and came to UH in 2002 after a stint as scientist for a private company in California.

He is working also with NASA on the potential of cyanobacteria in future lunar and Mars colonization, and is also proceeding to take his ethanol technology into the marketplace. A business plan using his system, under the name La Wahie Biotech, won third place — and a $5,000 award — in the Business Plan Competition at UH’s Shidler College of Business.
Daniel Dean and Donavan Kealoha, both UH law and business students, are Fu’s partners. So they are in the process of turning the business plan into an operating business.

The production of ethanol for fuel is one of the nation’s and the world’s major initiatives, partly because its production takes as much carbon out of the atmosphere as it dumps into the atmosphere. That’s different from fossil fuels such as oil and coal, which take stored carbon out of the ground and release it into the atmosphere, for a net increase in greenhouse gas.
Most current and planned ethanol production methods depend on farming, and in the case of corn and sugar, take food crops and divert them into energy.

Fu said crop-based ethanol production is slow and resource-costly. He decided to work with cyanobacteria, some of which convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into their own food and release oxygen as a waste product.

Other scientists also are researching using cyanobacteria to make ethanol, using different strains, but Fu’s technique is unique, he said. He inserted genetic material into one type of freshwater cyanobacterium, causing it to produce ethanol as its waste product. It works, and is an amazingly efficient system.

The technology is fairly simple. It involves a photobioreactor, which is a
fancy term for a clear glass or plastic container full of something alive, in which light promotes a biological reaction. Carbon dioxide gas is bubbled through the green mixture of water and cyanobacteria. The liquid is then passed through a specialized membrane that removes the
ethanol, allowing the water, nutrients and cyanobacteria to return to the
photobioreactor.

Solar energy drives the conversion of the carbon dioxide into ethanol. The partner of Prof. Fu in Brazil in the branch-office of La Wahie Biotech Inc. in Aracaju – Prof. Hans-Jürgen Franke – is developing a low-cost photo-bio-reactor-system. Prof. Franke want´s soon creat a pilot-project with Prof. Fu in Brazil.

The benefit over other techniques of producing ethanol is that this is simple and quick—taking days rather than the months required to grow crops that can be converted to ethanol.

La Wahie Biotech Inc. believes it can be done for significantly less than the cost of gasoline and also less than the cost of ethanol produced through conventional methods.

Also, this system is not a net producer of carbon dioxide: Carbon dioxide released into the environment when ethanol is burned has been withdrawn from the environment during ethanol production. To get the carbon dioxide it needs, the system could even pull the gas out of the emissions of power plants or other carbon dioxide producers. That would prevent carbon dioxide release into the atmosphere, where it has been implicated as a
major cause of global warming.
Honolulo – Hawaii/USA and Aracaju – Sergipe/Brasil – 15/09/2008

Prof. Pengcheng Fu – E-Mail: pengchen2008@gmail.com
Prof. Hans-Jürgen Franke – E-Mail: lawahiebiotech.brasil@gmail.com

Tel.: 00-55-79-3243-2209

http://www.originoil.com/applications/originoil-benefits.html

In the links it describes getting light to their algae using LED’s. Sounds more complicated and less efficient than direct sunlight exposure–but the devil is in the details.

I also like the linked discussion about the energy needed to get the oil out of the algae==an important step regarding efficiency.

All this stuff has complexities not readily apparent==but answers too.

Future is looking brighter to me, if we can get there?

Many thanks for that

I just tried to makee a terse reference to a terrific finding (via reddit.com BTW) Of course I’ve missed things.

One of those would be that you could build a power station that would burn the algae fat in some gas turbine, and the resulting CO2 + H2O would go back into the algae reactor.

One thing that is not explained in the video is how the CO2 is fed into the bioreactor.

Another thing is the carbohidrates + proteins subproducts that could be used as fertiliser / cattle feed / ethanol…

There are other algae biofuel companies:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/06/algal-biofuels-klm-cruise-ships.php

But they use open ponds instead of controlled bioreactors.

It does need SUNLIGHt though… B-)

You may have missed the coolest thing about your own post. This does not require arable farm land. This is essentially solar energy to power cars without putting farmland for food in competition with fuel. I think I’ve also heard of similar technologies that actually grow the algae faster by pumping in the CO2 from power plant smokestacks thus reducing their carbon output.

Now, its interesting how you parallel the same construction with your response and yours seems right, while Mustards does too?

Do you read Steven Pinker at all? Psycho-Linguistic Prof at Harvard. Good stuff.

So, I think my sentence was a question, and as such should end with a question mark. I was in fact not being conclusionary and was asking for confirmation. A matter of emphasis and flexibility. In fact, I see I could legitimately end every sentence in this paragraph with a question mark. The punctuation DOES change the meaning, so by wanting to change my punctuation, you want to change what I say.

That piece of poetry is one of my favorites. I read the poem once, and it has stuck with me forever. I used to think it was Archibald MacLiesh, but I think his poem was on the opposite page. Its Yeats, or Keats, or Yates–cant keep those (romance?) poets separate.

Dont miss the link in #27–its fantastic.

I think Mustard’s punctuation is more standard than your own?

You may be right. I may be crazy. But, it just may be a period you were looking for at the end of that rather than a question mark.

Regarding your poetry, I think verse is exempt from many of the rules that apply to prose. Are you claiming that most of your posts to be in verse? I would have thought the inverse.

#26==Scott==I think Mustard’s punctuation is more standard than your own? Your first sentence strikes me more as a dependent phrase. But, that could be just me===no, it is certainly ME!!

Punctuation? Rules: “and the priests in black gowns, were making their rounds, and binding with briars, my joys and desires.”

http://www.naturalnews.com/023378.html

>>So, in a real way, as Mustard has obnoxiously
>>posted, higher gas prices even if artificial
>>thru taxes or cartels, is motivating the
>>switch to alternative energy.

Don’t be kissing Scottie’s ass too much now, Bobbolina.

HE was the one who first posted that idea. My contribution to the discussion was merely to agree with him.

Yeah. Sounds like me I’ll take the credit/blame for that as well as the moniker obnoxious. I’ve been called much worse.

Hey, I may be obnoxious, but at least I khow the general rules of punctuation.

But, do you khow how to spell? Or, are you merely ignoring your Firefox 3 spell checker?

And, for that matter, your statement if correctly punctuated and spelled, might be:

Hey, I may be obnoxious. But, at least I know the general rules of punctuation.

I think we all get a bit lax sometimes. bobbo just invents his own rules for punctuation and then enforces strict dictionary definitions on words. bobbo, you might really want to think about that dichotomy a bit and convert to more standard use of punctuation. It seems to put a lot of people off on this blog. It’s just a suggestion; it’s your call, of course. I’ve actually gotten abused to your punctuation style by now.

Scott==take the greenhouse effect and the co2 pollution out of the picture and just go with “need for energy.”

A carbon tax does provide an artificial incentive for other energy sources==but so does a “real” increase in the cost of oil.

What’s artificial about charging a dumping fee? We do so for landfills. Why not for “airfills” and even “oceanfills”?

So==why not just let the market rule?

Because we don’t have a free market. Never did. We have a heavily subsidized market. And, some of the subsidies are rather hard to detect, like the subsidy of allowing people to dump all kinds of crap into the atmosphere. We charge for toxic waste dumping, nuclear waste dumping (if we ever open a permanent facility anyway), why not air dumping?

What would have happened if the last 6 presidents had just been honest and said “Its too complicated and we are stupid, so we are going to let the market control this resource.

Nothing good. We need deep accounting if the market is going to be the source of intelligent decision making. We need cradle to grave accounting for everything. Better yet, we need cradle to cradle since anything that is not properly recycled is, by definition, not sustainable.

As we approach oil shortages, oil replacements will “by definition” become cheaper and cost effective. Government cannot centrally plan these things without waste and fraud==so again, we are going to let the market rule. Watch out for you own interests, because we aren’t going to.”

This may be an improvement. However, it will not save us from true catastrophes because people will still burn whole mountains of coal leaving us with subsidized (i.e. not properly accounted for costs of the mountains themselves and the literal mountains of CO2 dumped into the atmosphere.

I wonder what a little honesty would have done for those seeking energy alternatives?

That honesty would have to include deep accounting to be really honest. How are you planning to create a system of deep accounting in our dysfunctional society?

Don’t be kissing Scottie’s ass too much now, Bobbolina.

HE was the one who first posted that idea. My contribution to the discussion was merely to agree with him.

Hey, I may be obnoxious, but at least I khow the general rules of punctuation.

A carbon tax does provide an artificial incentive for other energy sources==but so does a “real” increase in the cost of oil. Every time there has been an oil shock, Americans have conserved for 2-6 months==and then bought the biggest cars they could find.

So, the market won’t do whats “right” but it does do what the economics encourage. So, in a real way, as Mustard has obnoxiously posted, higher gas prices even if artificial thru taxes or cartels, is motivating the switch to alternative energy.

So==why not just let the market rule? What would have happened if the last 6 presidents had just been honest and said “Its too complicated and we are stupid, so we are going to let the market control this resource. As we approach oil shortages, oil replacements will “by definition” become cheaper and cost effective. Government cannot centrally plan these things without waste and fraud==so again, we are going to let the market rule. Watch out for you own interests, because we aren’t going to.”

I wonder what a little honesty would have done for those seeking energy alternatives?

BUT–the notion of not destroying the rain forrest is a good idea we have in the West==the Brazilians are busy destroying their forrest as reapidly as we did ours, as is China, as is India?

Almost exactly right. You just missed the point that we are still clear cutting huge swaths of our own rainforests (temperate rainforests) in Alaska. Many acres have been given back to native Americans since they were managing them for thousands of years. Unfortunately, they’re just people like you and me and will also go for the quick short term profit of clear cutting forest. Humans suck.

I can’t wait for 2-3-4 more advances in solar conversion. Love to know where we would be had solar been fast tracked 40 years ago??

Why wait? PVCs are getting a lot better already. And, concentrated solar is even better. Another great source is simply using solar to heat water and store hot water underground. That water can then be fed to our conventional power plants which will require a lot less fuel to heat the water the last few degrees and then burn dramatically less fuel.

We’ve got the technology. We just need the revenue neutral carbon tax (or I’d settle for carbon trading) to jump start the financial investment.

“To the Future, and beyond!!”

To the future! (What little there is left of it for us apes.)

Nobody grows food for the poor people or to grow it to lower prices. I don’t think anyone is starving in Brazil from a lack of food==if anything, some can’t afford what is already available and farmers have no interest in growing more and reducing their per unit profit.

BUT–the notion of not destroying the rain forrest is a good idea we have in the West==the Brazilians are busy destroying their forrest as reapidly as we did ours, as is China, as is India?

But yes==I think bio fuels need to be thought of only for waste products that would otherwise be burned or buried. It will always be a very small percentage more for waste management than energy.

I can’t wait for 2-3-4 more advances in solar conversion. Love to know where we would be had solar been fast tracked 40 years ago??

“To the Future, and beyond!!”

The following line should not have been in italics. It is my comment, not bobbo’s. I must’ve missed a close tag.

Excellent point. These are also severe problems with growing crops for fuel.