[N941WR]

We may not need to drill for oil in the future or worry about carbon emissions.

Check out this news story:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091210162222.htm

 

[hydroguy2]

Dang! I think I was this close >l...l< to having a fuel farm in the sink of my first apartment.

 

[Vlad]

What if?

I didn't read the whole research paper but it looks not that simple. What if they slice those genes from that cyanosynechongatus bacteria wrong way? What if a microbe escapes and mutates in environment? We may have natural lakes full of biofuel with octane of the LL. What if... (skeptics please help) Give us our carbon dioxide back!

 

[N941WR]

I didn't read the whole research paper but it looks not that simple. What if they slice those genes from that cyanosynechongatus bacteria wrong way? What if a microbe escapes and mutates in environment? We may have natural lakes full of biofuel with octane of the LL. What if... (skeptics please help) Give us our carbon dioxide back!

Sounds like if that happens then we need to start burning the fuel at fast rates and Van's will be forced put IO-540's in everything!

Seriously, when they engineer these "Bugs" they usually design them so they can be controlled by either very tight temperature requirements or some catalyst that does not occur in nature. Thus, if they get out in the wild, they simply die. That said, accidents do happen and the bugs could mutate.

 

[breister]

Many of the bio-bugs being explored to create synthetic fuels require temperatures higher than those found in nature, so the risk with the ones I know about (e.g. Swift Fuel) are probably safe. However, a room-temperature bug certainly poses risks.

The other factor is that alcohols do not contain the same energy density as 100LL, and thus you will get fewer miles per gallon.

Hope they find something soon, though - wouldn't it be great if you could just sprinkle this stuff on a pond, come back at the end of the summer, and pump the results into 55 gallon drums?