As our technological boundaries continue to be conquered and redrawn, there are some on the bleeding edge of innovation that seem to blur the line between technology and magic. What Cambridge, Massachusetts based Joule Biotechnologies is claiming to have accomplished seems nothing short of magical: putting organisms, sunlight and carbon dioxide into a box and making a viable petroleum substitute appear. No drilling, no burning off waste. According to the company, that has been operating in stealth mode for nearly two years time, they are ushering in the new standard of fuel as essentially, liquid solar power.
“There is no question that viable, renewable fuels are vitally important, both for economic and environmental reasons. And while many novel approaches have been explored, none has been able to clear the roadblocks caused by high production costs, environmental burden and lack of real scale,” said Bill Sims, president and CEO.
If correct, their plan can take two of the most abundant things on the planet—photons and carbon dioxide—and circumvent the need to be drilling more wells searching for oil. Their “black box” is dubbed a Solar Converter, which reportedly uses proprietary organisms to induce photosynthesis, creating a hydrocarbon liquid the company calls SolarFuel. Simms points out that this separates them from a biofuel process, like ethanol, which uses a plant base for its feed stock.
The prospect of sun fed fuel could impressively leap-frog the ethanol industry, replacing it as the renewable fuel of choice given that its carbon footprint could vastly outperform ethanol’s much debated, corn-based and energy intensive process. Eventually, such a model could propose to achieve the impossible: bring the use and production of our country’s fuel to a level of stasis with the net input of carbon equaling the net output of its use.
Joule Biotech says they can create 20,000 gallons of fuel per acre at roughly $50 a barrel with current subsidies, certainly a competitive price point out of the box. Furthermore, the fuel is purportedly going to be compatible with existing engines for diesel and gasoline, wiping out the potential snag of retooling an industry. With a pilot plant scheduled to come online in 2010, their next milestone could be a ramp up for commercial scale production in 2012 with additional investing. Despite not knowing how cleanly the fuel burns in comparison to ethanol or conventional gasoline, the prospects of carbon improvement on the national scale are far-reaching.
So where is the downside? I had trouble finding one myself. Though I have to admit that the claims bring to mind another magical fix that spawned years ago called Thermal Conversion Process (TCP) technology developed by a company called Renewable Energy Solutions.
Their process claimed to make synthetic petroleum from super-heating agricultural and industrial waste such as tires, plastics and paper. The idea seemed attractive when they claimed their only by-products were fuel gas (butane, methane, propane mix), synthetic oil and water. The prospects seemed to offer a solution to not only our foreign oil dilemma, but a significant portion of our waste issue as well with (similarly) a virtually unlimited feedstock. Unfortunately, it seems no new plants other than the pilot plant in Carthage Missouri have been constructed and for some reason, they have not catalyzed a new standard in fuel production. Hopefully, we will be hearing much more from Joule Biotech in the near future.
July 28, 2009 at 12:32 pm
The downside is, any time we burn anything with hydrocarbons, that is, hydrogen and carbon, including synthetic fuels, ethanol, fossil fuels, wood, etc, two greenhouse gases are the products! Currently carbon removal (CCS) is far off (and very expensive ) into the future.
July 28, 2009 at 12:41 pm
I hear you Glenn, but at the same time the prospect of getting closer to a net carbon-neutral fuel is something that no fuel option can deliver for how we transport ourselves and products across the country. To my knowledge, we do not have any realistic zero-carbon means for automotive and shipping travel. I am one that usually believes in taking the best options available.
July 28, 2009 at 3:22 pm
Using photosynthesis is the only way to a sustainable future. Solutions such as shown by Joule Biotechnologies were first voiced, I think, around 1948. Think about it, most of our mineral oil comes from phytoplankton, now ‘harvested’ with a delay of a few million years after they foxed the carbon dioxide from the air. And the re-introduction of that carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere takes place in a time frame of barely 200 years. That’s why we potentially have a climate problem.
There are different types of plants that photosynthesize, those that live on land, and those that live in the ocean. The land plants are big, use fresh water, and grow slowly. Those in the sea do not compete for fresh water, grow fast, and are very small. They are called phytoplankton, and once they are understood as a new resource, many global problems will be mitigated, even solved. The smallest problem being the supply of energy. I called this activity Marine Agriculture, you may read more about it on my blog.
July 28, 2009 at 3:24 pm
When you burn a biofuel like this, the CO2 you put in the atmosphere is only what you took out by making the fuel. So this is indeed a zero-carbon fuel.
The same is true of other biofuels, except that when you take things like deforestation into account, they can end up having a worse net impact than fossil fuels. With this stuff, you can use desert land, and have a true zero net.
(If you really want to reverse things, start taking additional carbon out of the atmosphere. Biochar is probably the most economical option, since it has side benefits like improving the fertility of soil. There’s also a new kind of cement that absorbs CO2, and several other ideas.)
August 14, 2009 at 9:24 am
As with all biodiesel propositions that use land plants, the main product will indeed be fats and lipids that the plants synthesize; the downside is, it requires freshwater.
Even in low-lands like northern Germany, groundwater levels are decreasing, or slowly become more salty. Both are indicators, that the rate of consumption exceeds the rate of replenishment. Mostly due to agricultural use. Look at the areal requirements: to replace 10% of the fuel that is used for transportation in the EU, you need 4 million ha of plants to make the required bio-diesel…which is exactly the area of fertile land in the combined EU that is not yet in use….
Let’s assume that climate change is taking place (if not, the problem above still there), whet might happen then? It is not that the amount of rain will decrease, but it is the volume of rain during showers that might increase, which, at the end, leads to an increased probability that the water will not be available to replenish groundwater levels, but simply runs off on the surface into rivers and finally, the ocean.
Marine phytoplankton offers other options, without the problems shown above, and with new opportunities as well. The biomass would not only be used as a source of fuel, but also as a basic resource for complex organic compounds, thereby increasing the residence time of the fixed carbon in another compartment than the atmosphere and hence, lowering atmospheric carbon levels.
August 14, 2009 at 12:28 pm
I can definitely agree that any process that creates another large, new tax on our fresh water sources requires investigation. The amount of water we have will be one of the greatest challenges for the health of the natural environment and humanity. On the bright side, here in the U.S. I see our water usage much like our energy usage. We have so much room for conservation and increased efficiency because we waste so much. My hope is that efforts to lower consumer water use (which would not be all that difficult) could make a big difference.
Concerning Joule Biotech’s scheme. A quote from their website claims: “We have developed a proprietary “platform” organism, which through the natural process of photosynthesis, catalyzes the direct conversion of sunlight and CO2 to useful fuels and chemicals; a dozen of which we’ve already proven. This direct-to-product conversion requires no agricultural land, crops, or fresh water, and avoids the costly, multi-step processes that impede time to market.”
This is not to say that I am betting the farm on their claims–I am still skeptical about this product claim despite how much I would love to be pleasantly surprised.
February 2, 2010 at 6:25 pm
Good article, we finaly have to care about our planet!