If this is real it will be world changing.

[Phier]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/...rticle1871149/

In September, a privately held and highly secretive U.S. biotech company named Joule Unlimited received a patent for “a proprietary organism” – a genetically adapted E. coli bacterium – that feeds solely on carbon dioxide and excretes liquid hydrocarbons: diesel fuel, jet fuel and gasoline. This breakthrough technology, the company says, will deliver renewable supplies of liquid fossil fuel almost anywhere on Earth, in essentially unlimited quantity and at an energy-cost equivalent of $30 (U.S.) a barrel of crude oil. It will deliver, the company says, “fossil fuels on demand.”

We’re not talking “biofuels” – not, at any rate, in the usual sense of the word. The Joule technology requires no “feedstock,” no corn, no wood, no garbage, no algae. Aside from hungry, gene-altered micro-organisms, it requires only carbon dioxide and sunshine to manufacture crude. And water: whether fresh, brackish or salt. With these “inputs,” it mimics photosynthesis, the process by which green leaves use solar energy to convert carbon dioxide into organic compounds. Indeed, the company describes its manufacture of fossil fuels as “artificial photosynthesis.”
Joule says it now has “a library” of fossil-fuel organisms at work in its Massachusetts labs, each engineered to produce a different fuel. It has “proven the process,” has produced ethanol (for example) at a rate equivalent to 10,000 U.S. gallons an acre a year. It anticipates that this yield could hit 25,000 gallons an acre a year when scaled for commercial production, equivalent to roughly 800 barrels of crude an acre a year.
By way of comparison, Cornell University’s David Pimentel, an authority on ethanol, says that one acre of corn produces less than half as much energy, equivalent to only 328 barrels. If a few hundred barrels of crude sounds modest, recall that millions of acres of prime U.S. farmland are now used to make corn ethanol.

The rest

Joule says its “solar converter” technology makes the manufacture of liquid fossil fuels 50 times as efficient as conventional biofuel production – and eliminates as much as 90 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions. “Requiring only sunlight and waste C0{-2},” it says, “[this] technology can produce virtually unlimited quantities of fossil fuels with zero dependence on raw materials, agricultural land, crops or fresh water. It ends the hazards of oil exploration and oil production. It takes us to the unthinkable: liquid hydrocarbons on demand.” The company name honours James Prescott Joule, the 19th-century British scientist. Founded only four years ago, it has begun pilot-project production in Leander, Tex. Using modular solar panels (imagine an array of conventional panels in a one-acre field), it says it will quickly ramp up production this year toward small-scale commercial production in 2012. Joule acknowledges its reluctance to fully explain its “solar converter.” CEO Bill Sims told Biofuels Digest, an online biofuels news service, that secrecy has been essential for competitive reasons. “Some time soon,” he said, “what we are doing will become clear.” Although astonishing in its assertions, Joule gains credibility from its co-founder: George Church, the Harvard Medical School geneticist who helped initiate the Human Genome Project in 1984. Joule began to generate buzz toward the end of 2010. When U.S. Senator John Kerry toured the company’s labs in October, he called the technology “a potential game-changer.” He noted, ironically, that the company’s science is so advanced that it can’t qualify for federal grants or subsidies: The government’s definition of biofuels requires the use of raw-material feedstock. In December, the World Technology Network named the company the world’s top corporate player in bio-energy research. Biofuels Digest named it one of the world’s “50 hottest” bio-energy enterprises, moving it ahead 10 places in the past year (from 32nd to 22nd). Selected from 1,000 eligible companies around the world, 37 of the “50 hottest” are American-based – another reason not to count out the U.S. just yet. Conventional fossil fuels are formed from solar energy, too – in a process that takes zillions of bugs and millions of years. Joule’s technology ostensibly produces the same products in less time. In other energy-producing roles, vast quantities of microbes are already hard at work underground, loosening hard-to-recover crude oil. It could be time for science to bring these bugs up into the light of day.

Either this is an investment scam, or its the most important practical use of genetic engineering to date. Its something I've often thought about as a "Why isn't someone doing that." and apparently they were.

Peak oil, alternative fuels, etc all out the door.

Hell it would even be 'carbon neutral'.

[Gordon Freynman]

Oil company executives just their pants.

[Claudius Gothicus]

Oil company executives just their pants.

They better buy some stocks on this bateria... now lol

[Logik]

They better buy some stocks on this bateria... now lol

I bet some are already thinking of taking a header of the tallest building.

[Saturn]

They better buy some stocks on this bateria... now lol

I will if this true.

[Logik]

I just wonder what the major oil producing country's are thinking right now.This is bad news for them if this is true.

[Lord Rahl]

Oh god I hope this is true. No longer will gas be ridiculously expensive and no longer will oil companies plague the earth.

Right, because oil companies are so evil...trying to provide the world of its energy demands.

Corn farmers may not be happy. But everyone else will be, so, suck it corn farmers.

Why the hate for corn farmers? As if farmers don't already have a hard enough life...

Oil company executives just their pants.

I doubt it. There are plenty of examples of new renewable resources over the years. It's one thing to come up with or find one but it's quite another to implement it into the energy system and/or have it make a significant enough impact on the overall energy market. Oil companies are also big contributors of alternative fuel or renewable energy research and development.

[Marie Louise von Preussen]

Wow.

[Tuor]

It's interesting and all, but I can't figure out why the geniuses behind this are using their genius to make an organism to do this, instead of using said genius to find an alternative to fossil fuel. Beggars can't be choosers, I guess. Nice find if it's legit, Phier.

[cpdwane]

It's interesting and all, but I can't figure out why the geniuses behind this are using their genius to make an organism to do this, instead using said genius to find an alternative to fossil fuel. Beggars can't be choosers, I guess. Nice find if it's legit, Phier.

If it can take the carbon dioxide that's already in the air and turn it into more fuel, a process which would probably put less CO2 back into the atmosphere then it took out anyway, then it doesn't matter if it's a fossil fuel or what. It's renewable, as far as i can see.

Or am I misunderstanding it?

[Tuor]

If it can take the carbon dioxide that's already in the air and turn it into more fuel, a process which would probably put less CO2 back into the atmosphere then it took out anyway, then it doesn't matter if it's a fossil fuel or what. It's renewable, as far as i can see.

Or am I misunderstanding it?

Well, if the total amount of CO2 is lessened globally, I see no problem either.

[John I Tzimisces]

Corn farmers may not be happy. But everyone else will be, so, suck it corn farmers.

[Copperknickers II]

It's interesting and all, but I can't figure out why the geniuses behind this are using their genius to make an organism to do this, instead of using said genius to find an alternative to fossil fuel. Beggars can't be choosers, I guess. Nice find if it's legit, Phier.

Yes I heard about this a couple of weeks ago. The reason that they are not looking for other sources of energy, Tuor, is that they are biologists, not chemists or physicists. Actually shortage of fossil fuels is a more pressing problem than climate change - what this effectively does is give the people who are working on nuclear fusion and such things another hundred years or so at least to work with, especially as the fact that it consumes carbon dioxide means it is a massive step in the direction of emissions reduction anyway.

[cpdwane]

Yes I heard about this a couple of weeks ago. The reason that they are not looking for other sources of energy, Tuor, is that they are biologists, not chemists or physicists. Actually shortage of fossil fuels is a more pressing problem than climate change - what this effectively does is give the people who are working on nuclear fusion and such things another hundred years or so at least to work with, especially as the fact that it consumes carbon dioxide means it is a massive step in the direction of emissions reduction anyway.

In terms of its effects on the planet, this technology is as much a fossil fuel as biomass is, so it's a bit of an innapropriate name really. And actually this technology is probably preferrable to any other fuel source we have come up with so far when it comes to powering our cars, because it means that all our old combustion engines will still work and won't need changing like they would for biomass or hydrogen (although I supose that depends on how close the finished product actually is to regular diesel or petrol.)

[cpdwane]

Wow.

[xcorps]

http://www.jouleunlimited.com/
http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/ne...ule-board.html
http://www.jouleunlimited.com/news/2...nlight-and-co2

Here's the patent application:

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20100330642.pdf

[Nikos]

If true, incredible.

[Theseus1234]

Oh god I hope this is true. No longer will gas be ridiculously expensive and no longer will oil companies plague the earth.

[Sphere]

It's a line of research I've read about a few times before. Engineering bacteria that produce desired products/consume undesired reactants as been around for a while, much of the work being related to the development of cellose based ethanol production.

That being said, this is not earthshaking, or at least not yet as designing a bacteria that in a lab setting do what you want it to due is not the same as an industrial process that can produce industrial quantities. This particular case does solve one problem, that is you don't have to provide somesort of feed to the bacteria which would get mixed in and possibly react with the end product, but you still presumably have this mess of bacteria in a vat of water and diesal fuel which you have to seperate out at some point. Which is hard to do with killing off all those bacteria you just grew.

So in short, that they are just now patenting this bacteria and have plans for a pilot program are very promising signs, but there are more likely harder challenges ahead of them than are behind them in terms of making it a viable industry.

[Logik]

Wow this incredible news indeed.Thanks Phier for sharing.