In September, a privately held and highly secretive U.S. bio-tech 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 “bio-fuels” – 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.”
If this is on the level, it would be fantastic.
Found by Cinàedh.
An update from the Boston Business Journal found by jeffreysdailey.
CO2 is not an energy source. What ever it is would have to eat something or photosynthesize. The existence of plants is not news.
CO2 is the food source, light is the energy, the fuel end product is bacteria poo. Since E. coli are not photosynthetic, I think I smells a fish.
John Podesta just left the Obama Adminstration to be a director with this company, I think.
Power stations that make use of fossil fuel can be constructed in almost any location. This is possible as long as large quantities of fuel can be easily brought to the power plants.