

Bugs produce diesel on demand - taytus
http://www.exeter.ac.uk/news/research/title_281715_en.html

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jcr
Original Press Source

<http://www.exeter.ac.uk/news/research/title_281715_en.html>

Actual Paper

[http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/04/17/1215966110.full...](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/04/17/1215966110.full.pdf)

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ChuckMcM
I thought I had seen it before. It saves the post processing step that the
NASA algae experiment had. Still it's an interesting result.

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mikhailfranco
If these processes ever go into production and create cheap fuel, the world
will really change. Presumably it will stop oil extraction industries from the
top down, i.e. high cost producers first. So tar sands, shale oil and deep
water sub-salt are the first to go (Canada, offshore Brazil, ...).

Even though Saudi Arabia is the lowest cost producer, it gives a lot of the
profits away to the people, in free health services, education, housing, low
cost fuel, and, increasingly, in bundles of cash, to reduce dissent. Of
course, the extended royal family takes a huge piece of the pie too. The
break-even cost of oil to balance current budgets in the GCC states is in the
range $80-130, with exception of Kuwait at $55:

<http://www.businessinsider.com/breakeven-oil-prices-2012-6>

The current price is around $100 for Brent, so it would only take a 25% price
fall to put the whole region in recession and turmoil (note Bahrain is under
water at the current price). The 'curse of oil' often means there is not much
other industry to take up the slack in these economies, although the UAE has
done a much better job than Saudi Arabia on that score. If you add recent news
stories about deep sea methane hydrate extraction, and fusion research at
Lockheed Martin SkunkWorks, the leaders of the world's oil producing nations
must be getting just a little bit apprehensive.

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zimbatm
Oil reserves are like a piggy bank of 100k year.

These bacterias still need to be fed with sugar. Like corn oil it means you're
diverting arable land to produce that. I'm not sure if it's really cheaper to
produce in the end.

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artichokeheart
Did anyone else looking at the front page of HN jump to the conclusion that if
this strain or similar of E. coli could be developed to live of human faeces
India could become a future bio-fuel giant

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swombat
Yep, I came to post this. But you beat me to it!

India, meet your saviour. Soon, the water tables of India will be awash
with... er... Diesel?

Hmm, not sure if that's that good a solution?...

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D9u
Regarding India's sewage issue, I wondered why feces isn't used in a methane
digestor, or as fertilizer?

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kaleidobug
Okay, Awesome. Now find something else that will eat up the carbon being
released from burning that diesel fuel.

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bcoates
The bacteria will be fed with sugars from crops that pulled carbon out of the
air. The whole cycle would produce energy from sunlight without netting out
any carbon release.

Given that liquid hydrocarbon fuels aren't going away anytime soon (or
possibly ever) finding non-fossil sources for them like this is pretty
important.

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junto
And everyone will starve, but will be able to drive to work! :-)

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regularfry
I am not a biochemist. Is this doing an end-run around the energy density
problem by converting useless hydrocarbons (which already have a lot of energy
stored, but not in a usable form), or does this still need an energy source -
be that solar, heat, whatever - to provide the energy to be stored in the
biodiesel?

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muriithi
The most frustrating thing about reading about exciting discoveries is how few
of them ever go into 'production' in the near future.

-Graphene

-AIDS vaccine

-Malaria vaccine

-Fusion reactors

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surrealize
Amryis produced a drop-in biofuel before this, but this work appears to use a
novel biosynthetic pathway.

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dreen
I thought initially I will be able to run my car for free thanks to this piece
of shit enterprise presentation software we have that crashes all the time.

I need some coffee.

