Though the concept of using microbes to power fuel cells has been around for a while, the green blogoshpere actively buzzes when some fresh news about such bugs surface. We need to change our perceptions about microbes and redefine bacteria as in this day and age as they no longer make you sick only or aid in processing foods. The story is that we can now generate petrol from them. LS9, one of several companies from Silicon Valley, has been managed to genetically alter the teeny-weeny bugs so that when they feed on agricultural waste such as woodchips or wheat straw, they ooze crude oil. Does that mean we raise and rear such pet bugs to bid adieu to oil barrels. Christened as “Oil 2.0”, it will not only be renewable but also carbon negative. That means the carbon that it emits will be less than that sucked from the atmosphere by the raw materials from which it is made.
If Mr. Pal, senior director of LS9, is to be believed then a small beaker of bug excretion can empower a giant Lexus SUV so sure. Theoretically that it is, as yet. Coming to the oil producing creepy-crawlies, LS9’s bugs are single-cell organisms, each a fraction of a billionth the size of an ant. They start out as industrial yeast or nonpathogenic strains of E. coli, but LS9 modifies them by custom-de-signing their DNA. And within few weeks and at the cost of about $20,000, you can change the whole new way of looking at bugs.
The closest that LS9 has come to mass production is a 1,000-litre fermenting machine, which looks like a large stainless-steel jar, next to a wardrobe-sized computer connected by a tangle of cables and tubes. The machine produces the equivalent of one barrel a week and takes up 40 sq ft of floor space.
Via Timesonline
