And if the Pyrococcus furiosus get out of the lab, then what?

Disruptive technology. Don't expect big-AGW to roll over too easily....

BwaaaHaHaHaHaHaHa!

I don't know if it is practical or not but one of the major problems with wind, solar and similar energy sources is that they are too variable for the grid but if they were used to run CO2 extractors or produce hydrogen via catalyzed electrolysis it would not need to be as time sensitive as grid demand power. Coupling these power sources with this technique would require the fermenting process to be scaled down to where an installation could be located near a wind/solar producing region. It would probably be smarter to concentrate on producing chemicals rather than fuel in the beginning.

Fire up the coal burners! Strip mining is making a comeback! LOL!

Please understand that this is an energy storage system, not an energy creation system. It is nice in that for every ton of CO2 generated by burning the resultant fuel, a ton of CO2 was removed from the atmosphere by this process. Further, liquid fuels, such as gasoline, have proven unmatched as a portable energy source.

This idea may be useful, but it is hardly free energy.

free energy is impossible anyway unless you genuinely think perpetual motion/energy "engiines" are things of reality. Physics says otherwise.

Bacteria will get out....simple as that...

This is great. But no numbers what so ever. It is possible to make build an organism from scratch that can have multiple artificial amino acid dependencies so it can't survive without feed stock. However genetically modifying an existing bacteria means that it has a good chance of surviving outside the lab. As I pointed out in my article on plastic recycling: http://rawcell.co...-income/ Similar to what has happened with genetically modified crops showing up in the wild. This sort of thing should be carefully regulated to make sure that a runaway problem isn't possible. I am still very interested in seeing some numbers though. My article on carbon capture assumed a price of $100/ton figure which we drew from the Carbon Engineering, a Calgary, Aberta firm founded in 2009 with money from Bill Gates for 2.602 Trillion cost to capture 100% of one years worth of world CO2 production. http://rawcell.co...capture/

http://www.pnas.o...bstract?
Don't need hydrogen but then it won't be carbon neutral. 3-Hydroxypropionic acid production can be done by whole cells using maltose or pyruvate as the source of acetyl-CoA.

And if the Pyrococcus furiosus get out of the lab, then what?

Some critter or other finds it delectable.

Fuel is not the first thing that comes to my mind if someone found a way to prepare 3-hydroxypropionic acid. The fine chemicals derived from it are far more valuable per weight than gasoline.

Every scientist just need to mention "biofuel" and "climate change" to get funding nowadays.

perpetual motion/energy "engiines" are things of reality. Physics says otherwise.

Michio Kaku classified them as "Type 4 impossibilities," but he points out that is based on the "known" laws of physics; or you might say what physicists THINK they know. If new discoveries are made, they may in fact be possible. After all, what are Dark Matter and Dark Energy?

Bacteria will get out....simple as that...

Yes.

Besides, you'd need to grow unimaginable amounts of the stuff to produce enough energy. We're talking about an amount more than all world agriculture combined.

A gallon of gasoline or diesel contains 65 times as much energy as a 2000 calorie diet.

Great, but what does Ned Flanders have to do with this?

Its not Ned Flanders. Its obviously Walter from Breaking Bad. He's gone straight.

And if the Pyrococcus furiosus get out of the lab, then what?

Pyrococcus furiosus can only survive at high temperatures. Even these guys which have been genetically modified to survive cooler temperatures than the natural species. So if they get out they will die.

The only real problem with this as a viable source of renewable fuel is that it would take a whole lot of energy to generate the hydrogen needed for the bacteria to do their thing.

A number of micro organisms transform what they feed on into either hydrogen or carbon dioxide. Some bacteria algae produce hydrogen and yeast produces carbon dioxide. I have been wondering for some time now how we could make use of the carbon dioxide produced by yeast, including the resultant heat and now know of Pyrococcus furiosus. I was interested in applying yeast to human waste products be they plant or animal based, as in what goes into a compost heap, or sewage systems. There is an evident ample diversity of organisms to produce the nourishment they all need from each other to eventually create fuel from carbon dioxide. That could be achieved by stacking the organisms and their food sources in subsequent steps of production so as to finally obtain the fuel without any added energy expenditure other than that effected by the micro organisms themselves.

A gallon of gasoline or diesel contains 65 times as much energy as a 2000 calorie diet.

I suggest you start eating 1/65th of a gallon of gasoline daily

Hydrocarbons are the fuel of the NOW, and near term (50 years) future.

Live with it.

"The polar bears will be fine." - Freeman Dyson

A gallon of gasoline or diesel contains 65 times as much energy as a 2000 calorie diet.

I suggest you start eating 1/65th of a gallon of gasoline daily

I was expressing how much more land you need to fuel a car for a few miles of driving as compared to feeding an adult human being for a day.

Disruptive technology. Don't expect big-AGW to roll over too easily....

Don't expect the Sun to roll over that easy, either.

The evidence is that The Sun has had significantly more influence on Earth weather than any man-made global warming: http://www.youtub...bservers et al ...

A gallon of gasoline or diesel contains 65 times as much energy as a 2000 calorie diet.

I suggest you start eating 1/65th of a gallon of gasoline daily

Hydrocarbons are the fuel of the NOW, and near term (50 years) future. Live with it. "The polar bears will be fine." - Freeman Dyson

Gee, wondering where hydrocarbons come from ... And ideas?

... Gammakozy, I hear you. Here we are freaking out over the co2 with headlines in the news all the time concerning the end of it all over co2. Maybe 5 years from now some genetically modified organism will have sucked all co2 from the earth and drop us into a deep freeze or worse. ...

... could happen, but that's a long shot. More likely that the next ice age will freeze out all of the CO2 in the air so the Global Worms can wander around picking it up with a shovel.

I don't know if it is practical or not but one of the major problems with wind, solar and similar energy sources is that they are too variable for the grid but if they were used to run CO2 extractors or produce hydrogen via catalyzed electrolysis it would not need to be as time sensitive as grid demand power. Coupling these power sources with this technique would require the fermenting process to be scaled down to where an installation could be located near a wind/solar producing region. It would probably be smarter to concentrate on producing chemicals rather than fuel in the beginning.

And there goes ALL of our tax money, right down that g'ment supervised and funded crapper.

And if the Pyrococcus furiosus get out of the lab, then what?

Some critter or other finds it delectable.

Like all the non-native plants and animals introduced to new ecosystems? There's not always something there to find a new organism tasty, so we can't just hope for it.