Four years. This is the goal set by researchers at Texas A&B for the deployment of near-commercial-scale technology to conjure regular ol’ oil — the kind that might wind up at a gas pump — from genetically modified algae. The task is as “simple” as forcing a certain and by-now quite famous variety of oil-yielding algae, B. braunii, to grow faster by combining it with another kind of algae that grows fast naturally, but isn’t so hot in the oil production department. In theory, it’s totally renewable and carbon-neutral. And their project earned a whopping two million dollars (say it in a Doctor Evil voice) from the National Science Foundation.B. brauniiproduces up to 85 percent of its body weight in hydrocarbons (the thing in oil that’s combusted), which are deposited outside of the algae’s thick cell wall where it can harvested using a particular solvent. With some processing, the result could be used to power the old kind of gas-powered cars — the kind we’ve spent the past decade pushing against — or as natural gas to heat homes or generate electricity. It’s pretty neat. And as a bonus,B. brauniicould theoretically consume enough CO2 to offset the amount emitted through combustion.“Algae take CO2 out of the atmosphere to make the oil and then when we burn the oil as fuel, we just put that CO2 back into the atmosphere," says project collaborator Dr. Tim Devarenne. "That is different from petroleum because the CO2 from petroleum has been stored underground for hundreds of millions of years and then we release that into the atmosphere when we burn fuels created from petroleum." See? Pretty neat.What’s more, the algae could be used to clean wastewater. Basically, you replace your wastewater treatment facility with an algae oil production outfit and grow the algae in the wastewater, which love the filth and clean it at the same time. Which works out because it’s generally best to keep B. braunii containted because it also happens to be rather toxic in some situations, dumping loads of fish-killing fatty acids into ecosystems when prompted by phosphorus.Anyhow, the problem is that while B. braunii has a potentially massive oil yield, it grows too slow to be terribly useful. Hence, the A&M research. If I don’t sound all that excited about this it’s because I’m not. The idea of a perfect or even acceptable CO2 offset seems a bit … suspicious. As does the idea that we’re going to reconfigure all of our wastewater treatment systems to be big algae parties. As does the idea that the vast pools of genetically boosted toxic algae needed for meaningful deployment of this technology aren’t going to overflow in a hurricane and kill off a coastline in such a way to put crude oil to shame.Reach this writer at michaelb@motherboard.tv.
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