LS9’s Designer Biofuel, Renewable Petroleum
The privately held, venture backed industrial biotechnology company, LS9, maintains that the answer to our gas crisis is renewable petroleum technology that they have custom engineered, a Designer Biofuel. Researchers at the San Francisco-based company have been able to alter existing bacteria to yield new, diesel-producing strains. They are also working on developing a bacteria strain that makes crude oil that canbe trucked and go through the refining process.
The hydrocarbon based biofuel mimics fuel properties of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, which allows it to run through existing pipeline infrastructure and run in any vehicle, setting it apart from other biofuel products. While LS9’s Designer Biofuel emits the same amount of greenhouse gas as regular crude oil and petroleum products in a combustible engine, the company purports that ultimately that they will have a much smaller impact since they don’t have to drill for the feedstock. Their product also produces twice the energy of regular petroleum products; so, it requires half of the amount of feedstock to yield the same amount of energy.
Aside from the environmental questions of emissions, the company is also competing with the challenge of moving this laboratory production to full scale industrial production.
Courtney:
Any idea what kind of production rate this process can achieve? For the same size of equipment, how does it compare to something like sugar cane ethanol?
this looks very cool…..
Hey Rod - I don’t know what the production rate is yet, but I do know that it is one of the major challenges for the company. Up to this point, they have only been able to synthesize very small quantities in a test tube.
Of course, the goal is to achieve scale, but at this point, information on what that means from an energy expense is unknown.
[...] beyond petroleum. You can’t run biofuels through existing pipelines (unless maybe it’s LS9), and replacing the pipelines would be a nightmare. They are a heavy crude production facility [...]
proprietary=bad
It’s an exciting idea. I would love for us to be able to eliminate our dependency on foreign oil. I especially love the thought of not sending billions of dollars to the part of the world that hates us the most.
Although the biofuel will emit the same amount of greenhouse gasses as gasoline, since it produces twice the energy, wouldn’t your fuel economy (& consequently emissions) be drastically improved?
I’m sure there will be many different groups that have multiple concerns about the bacteria (especially E. coli & the like) that would be used. Another classic case of “Not In My Backyard”. We all, however, will benefit from this.
I hope the LS9 will be succesful, i currently run a small biodiesel production facility and am douting the future of the industry. Not only are the prices of raw materials rising. as time goes by and people use the biofuels i hear complaints about the “long term” effects biofuels have on thier engines. It is becoming a increasing contest with petroleum based products (which i saw for $3.89 today). Although this is bad for me i try to look at the big picture, were no further away from are reliance on forien oil than we were 5 years ago.
Spanish company touts process to turn urban waste into biodiesel
By Ron Kotrba
A group of Spanish developers working under the company name Ecofasa, headed by chief executive officer and inventor Francisco Angulo, has developed a biochemical process to turn urban solid waste into a fatty acid biodiesel feedstock. “It took more than 10 years working on the idea of producing biodiesel from domestic waste using a biological method,” Angulo told Biodiesel Magazine. “My first patent dates back to 2005. It was first published in 2007 in Soto de la Vega, Spain, thanks to the council and its representative Antonio Nevado.”
Using microbes to convert organic material into energy isn’t a new concept to the renewable energy industries, and the same can be said for the anaerobic digestion of organic waste by microbes, which turns waste into biogas consisting mostly of methane. However, using bacteria to convert urban waste to fatty acids, which can then be used as a feedstock for biodiesel production, is a new twist. The Spanish company calls this process and the resulting fuel Ecofa. “It is based on metabolism’s natural principle by means of which all living organisms, including bacteria, produce fatty acids,” Angula said. “[It] comes from the carbon of any organic waste.”
He defined urban waste as “organic wastes from home like food, paper, wood and dung,” and added that any carbon-based material can be used for biodiesel production under the Ecofa process. “For many years, I wondered why there are pools of oil in some mountains,” he said, explaining the reasoning behind his invention. “After delving into the issue, I realized that [those oil deposits] were produced by decomposing organic living microorganisms.” This, in Angulo’s mind, sparked the idea that food waste and bacteria could be turned into fatty acids that could react into biodiesel. Two types of bacteria are under further development by Biotit Scientific Biotechnology Laboratory in Seville, Spain: E. coli and Firmicutes. The Ecofa process also produces methane gas, and inconvertible solids that can be used as a soil amendment or fertilizer. “There is a huge variety of bacteria,” Angulo said. “Currently, [biodiesel producers] receive a fat that must be processed through transesterification into biodiesel, but we are also working on other types of bacteria that are capable of producing fatty acids with the same characteristics as biodiesel.” He said this would eventually allow producers to skip the transesterification step.
Ecofasa may avoid the ongoing food-versus-fuel debate and its expected successor, indirect land use, with its Ecofa process. “It would not be necessary to use specific fields of maize, wheat, barley, beets, etc., which would remain for human consumption without creating distortions or famines with unforeseeable consequences,” the company stated in a press release. “This microbial technique can be extended to other organic debris, plants or animals, such as those contained in urban sewage. You can even experiment with other carbon sources, and this opens up a lot of possibilities. It is only necessary to find the appropriate bacteria.”
The company created its name by combining the term “eco-combustible” with F.A., the initials of the inventor.
“Today we feel that we can produce between one and two liters [of biodiesel] per 10 kilograms of trash,” Angulo said. That’s a little more than one-fourth to one-half of a gallon for every 22 pounds of trash—or between 24 and 48 gallons per ton of urban waste. “We are working to improve that,” he said.
http://www.youtube.com/user/agnux