Scientists find bugs that eat waste and excrete petrol

[Father Jack]

Poor little bugs .... scared silly of the consequences of farting !! ..

 

[Rodimus Prime]

It's dumb.
No, it's REALLY dumb.
One thing we DON'T need is more environmentally unfriendly hydrocarbons. Why not use the time and money and energy to come up with alternative energy sources? Forward thinking? Hardly. It's some guy who got a grant and has absolutely no forward thought. And the biotech start-up seeking capital comment? Brilliant, because that is the answer. And while I've always believed that ANY research is good research, in this case I'd rather see them work on something more legitimate.

not really it is carbon neutral.

As for the bugs I do not think they are the best solution. I read another article about genetically altered bacteria that did the same thing. To be more exact it was a lot bacteria that currently used to produce ethnal just instead of that it was used to produce oil. Hardest part about it is oil is toxic to most living things.

 

[egor]

What happens if Brazil decides to stop subsidising its sugar cane farmers? Many already fuel their cars with biodiesel (made from chip fat oil, made from plants), all this provides is a way to convert the same raw material into petroleum instead. The real problem preventing large-scale biodiesel is an economically self-sustaining crop, I can't see how these bacteria would change that.

 

[Abstract]

How many times can these bugs fart out oil before they die off? How are they going to charge us for this bacteria at the station......$1.47 per Mole?

 

[Mousse]

A bug that makes oil; I remember reading about that back in the 90's. Dr. Kio Marv, a Czech biologist, develops "OILEX", a microbe that can synthesize high-grade petroleum. He's kidnapped while at a conference by agents of Zanzibar land-- Hey that happened in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake.

Now that Oilex is a reality, how about beginning work on a walking tank.

 

[nbs2]

It's dumb.
No, it's REALLY dumb.
One thing we DON'T need is more environmentally unfriendly hydrocarbons.

I don't see how this would be unfriendly. Current processes consume nothing to produce (in that the organic matter is already crude oil), and emit (for the sake of argument) 100 units of carbon per barrel. This design would consume more than 100 units of carbon per barrel, let's say 101, and emit the same 100. Sure it produces another 100, but by cleaning out 101, the end result is better than where we started.

Ideally, this could even be used simply to help clean the atmosphere, as even if the oil produced isn't used, atmospheric carbon would be consumed.

 

[Antares]

There was an article on this in a recent issue of Popular Science magazine. I don't remember if it was this team or another group that is modifying bacteria to produce a by-product similar to petroleum. I think it was the April Issue that discussed "the oil bug."

Very interesting, indeed.

 

[themadchemist]

That little problem of scaling up? That's a huge problem with this. Otherwise, interesting.

I do think it's amusing that the inherent inefficiency of the system (the organism needs to shunt some of the consumed carbon away for its own purposes) is actually an advantage here.