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.