
Bug eats electricity, farts biogas - habs
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16902-bacterium-eats-electricity-farts-biogas.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=tech
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stcredzero
The other way around would also be nice: Eats biogas, farts electricity. But
for that, we already have fuel cells.

A methane/propane economy would be much easier to reach than a hydrogen
economy. The small size of H2 molecules creates difficulty when it comes to
storing and transporting hydrogen gas. Creating hydrogen storage for
transportation applications that is light enough, small enough, and safe
enough is especially difficult. (We can do any 2 of the 3.) We can already to
all 3 for propane.

Unfortunately, the 80% energy recovery is probably in the form of heat. To
convert that back into electricity, we're most certainly going to lose about
60%, giving an overall efficiency of about 25%. Such low efficiencies are
worth it to enable mobile applications, however.

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param
True. Most such innovative tech articles are always incredibly optimistic. I
am sure there are tons of engineering problems that need to be solved before
this can actually be used.

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streety
Reading the title my biggest concern was low efficiency but 80% actually seems
quite good.

There is still the issue of how much energy you need to expend supplying CO2
but as you'll be producing relatively pure CO2 when you burn the methane I
doubt it would be that big an issue.

On the plus side it sounds as though the bacteria hasn't been optimised so to
me it seems likely that greater efficiencies could be achieved.

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biohacker42
It's hard to optimize bacteria. You get your bacterium juuuust right, and then
you get it to multiply and by the time you have a tank full, it's been
_intelligently designed_ all over the damn place!

\--EDIT---

I don't mind being downvoted, unless it's because people's sarcasm detector
isn't working.

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eru
Your point seems valid. Why not pack it like this:

"It's hard to optimize bacteria. You get your bacterium juuuust right, and
then you get it to multiply and by the time you have a tank full, their genome
has already drifted."

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biohacker42
I assumed that given the character of this website, and the italics, it should
be obvious I meant that. But I guess not, there's a lesson here about being
too clever.

~~~
eru
Sure, it was obvious. But it was trying to hard to be funny.

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nebula
_the organism can take in electrons and use their energy to convert carbon
dioxide into methane._

I don't know how exactly this organism works. It would be really game changing
if this can be modified to use photons instead of electrons. Especially given
that it's 80% energy efficient in terms of the final energy, after burning
methane.

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viggity
I initially thought the contributor took some liberties with the title, but
nope, that is the actual title from New Scientist. Wow.

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bitwize
Coming soon to news.yc: Mammal eats grass, farts biogas.

Harvesting cow farts is a logistical nightmare though :(

