[LINK] Fossil Fuels on Demand

[Tom Koltai]

>From an article:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/a-brave-new-world-o
f-fossil-fuels-on-demand/article1871149/

Quote/ 
In September, a privately held and highly secretive U.S. biotech 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." 
.
Joule says it now has "a library" of fossil-fuel organisms at work in
its Massachusetts labs, each engineered to produce a different fuel. It
has "proven the process," has produced ethanol (for example) at a rate
equivalent to 10,000 U.S. gallons an acre a year. It anticipates that
this yield could hit 25,000 gallons an acre a year when scaled for
commercial production, equivalent to roughly 800 barrels of crude an
acre a year.

By way of comparison, Cornell University's David Pimentel, an authority
on ethanol, says that one acre of corn produces less than half as much
energy, equivalent to only 328 barrels. If a few hundred barrels of
crude sounds modest, recall that millions of acres of prime U.S.
farmland are now used to make corn ethanol.
/Quote


And from their website:
http://www.jouleunlimited.com/why-solar-fuel/how-it-works

Quote/
Requiring only sunlight and waste CO2, this system can produce renewable
diesel fuel in virtually unlimited quantities at costs as low as
$30/barrel equivalent, overcoming the challenges of oil exploration and
production. 
/Quote