T*********I
发帖数: 10729 | 1 好多大的新闻媒体转载，比如ＡＢＣｎｅｗｓ．
Mass. company making diesel with sun, water, CO2
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) -- A Massachusetts biotechnology company says it can
produce the fuel that runs Jaguars and jet engines using the same
ingredients that make grass grow.
Joule Unlimited has invented a genetically-engineered organism that it says
simply secretes diesel fuel or ethanol wherever it finds sunlight, water and
carbon dioxide.
The Cambridge, Mass.-based company says it can manipulate the organism to
produce the renewable fuels on demand at unprecedented rates, and can do it
in facilities large and small at costs comparable to the cheapest fossil
fuels.
What can it mean? No less than "energy independence," Joule's web site tells
the world, even if the world's not quite convinced.
"We make some lofty claims, all of which we believe, all which we've
validated, all of which we've shown to investors," said Joule chief
executive Bill Sims.
"If we're half right, this revolutionizes the world's largest industry,
which is the oil and gas industry," he said. "And if we're right, there's no
reason why this technology can't change the world."
The doing, though, isn't quite done, and there's skepticism Joule can live
up to its promises.
National Renewable Energy Laboratory scientist Philip Pienkos said Joule's
technology is exciting but unproven, and their claims of efficiency are
undercut by difficulties they could have just collecting the fuel their
organism is producing.
Timothy Donohue, director of the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center at
the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says Joule must demonstrate its
technology on a broad scale.
Perhaps it can work, but "the four letter word that's the biggest stumbling
block is whether it `will' work," Donohue said. "There are really good ideas
that fail during scale up."
Sims said he knows "there's always skeptics for breakthrough technologies."
"And they can ride home on their horse and use their abacus to calculate
their checkbook balance," he said.
Joule was founded in 2007. In the last year, it's roughly doubled its
employees to 70, closed a $30 million second round of private funding in
April and added John Podesta, former White House chief of staff under
President Bill Clinton, to its board of directors.
The company worked in "stealth mode" for a couple years before it recently
began revealing more about what it was doing, including with a patent last
year for its production of diesel molecules from its cyanobacterium. This
month, it released a peer-reviewed paper it says backs its claims.
Work to create fuel from solar energy has been done for decades, such as by
making ethanol from corn or extracting fuel from algae. But Joule says they'
ve eliminated the middleman that's makes producing biofuels on a large scale
so costly.
That middleman is the "biomass," such as the untold tons of corn or algae
that must be grown, harvested and destroyed to extract a fuel that still
must be treated and refined to be used. Joule says its organisms secrete a
completed product, already identical to ethanol and the components of diesel
fuel, then live on to keep producing it at remarkable rates.
Joule claims, for instance, that its cyanobacterium can produce 15,000
gallons of diesel full per acre annually, over four times more than the most
efficient algal process for making fuel. And they say they can do it at $30
a barrel.
A key for Joule is the cyanobacterium it chose, which is found everywhere
and is less complex than algae, so it's easier to genetically manipulate,
said biologist Dan Robertson, Joule's top scientist.
The organisms are engineered to take in sunlight and carbon dioxide, then
produce and secrete ethanol or hydrocarbons -- the basis of various fuels,
such as diesel -- as a byproduct of photosynthesis.
The company envisions building facilities near power plants and consuming
their waste carbon dioxide, so their cyanobacteria can reduce carbon
emissions while they're at it.
The flat, solar-panel style "bioreactors" that house the cyanobacterium are
modules, meaning they can build arrays at facilities as large or small as
land allows, the company says. The thin, grooved panels are designed for
maximum light absorption, and also so Joule can efficiently collect the fuel
the bacteria secrete.
Recovering the fuel is where Joule could find significant problems, said
Pienkos, the NREL scientist, who is also principal investigator on a
Department of Energy-funded project with Algenol, a Joule competitor that
makes ethanol and is one of the handful of companies that also bypass
biomass.
Pienkos said his calculations, based on information in Joule's recent paper,
indicate that though they eliminate biomass problems, their technology
leaves relatively small amounts of fuel in relatively large amounts of water
, producing a sort of "sheen." They may not be dealing with biomass, but the
company is facing complicated "engineering issues" in order to recover
large amounts of its fuel efficiently, he said.
"I think they're trading one set of problems for another," Pienkos said.
Success or failure for Joule comes soon enough. The company plans to break
ground on a 10-acre demonstration facility this year, and Sims says they
could be operating commercially in less than two years.
Robertson talks wistfully about the day he'll hop into the Ferrari he doesn'
t have, fill it with Joule fuel and gun the engine in an undeniable
demonstration of the power and reality of Joule's ideas. Later, after
leading a visitor on a tour of the labs, Robertson comes upon a poster of a
sports car on an office wall, and it reminds him of the success he's
convinced is coming. He motions to the picture.
"I wasn't kidding about the Ferrari," he says. | g*********d
发帖数: 233 | 2 but the
company is facing complicated "engineering issues" in order to recover
large amounts of its fuel efficiently, he said. | H****s
发帖数: 301 | 3 Efficient recovery of biofuel from algae is a challenge everywhere.
【在 g*********d 的大作中提到】
: but the
: company is facing complicated "engineering issues" in order to recover
: large amounts of its fuel efficiently, he said.
| g****u
发帖数: 1422 | 4 任何技术在早期都普遍被质疑。
我很看好这个技术。至于所谓的浓缩技术困难，我相信随着产量提高和多方面的优化，
应当能克服的
【在 g*********d 的大作中提到】
: but the
: company is facing complicated "engineering issues" in order to recover
: large amounts of its fuel efficiently, he said.
| m**********2
发帖数: 6568 | 5
呵呵，另一方面99.99%的发明和革新都躺到了历史的垃圾堆里。原因当然是多方面的，
不一定是技术的
原因。
就这个来说，我比较谨慎。这个领域这么吹的，他不是第一个。前20都够呛。等他搞成
了，有的是时间
来膜拜他。眼下我即没有钱也没有兴趣给他投资--investors, that is what he's
after.
【在 g****u 的大作中提到】
: 任何技术在早期都普遍被质疑。
: 我很看好这个技术。至于所谓的浓缩技术困难，我相信随着产量提高和多方面的优化，
: 应当能克服的
| s********n
发帖数: 2939 | 6 Agreed.
这个领域至少做了几十年了吧，但是contaminations和harvest一直都没能解决，这是
阻碍其工业化的关键因素。
【在 m**********2 的大作中提到】
:
: 呵呵，另一方面99.99%的发明和革新都躺到了历史的垃圾堆里。原因当然是多方面的，
: 不一定是技术的
: 原因。
: 就这个来说，我比较谨慎。这个领域这么吹的，他不是第一个。前20都够呛。等他搞成
: 了，有的是时间
: 来膜拜他。眼下我即没有钱也没有兴趣给他投资--investors, that is what he's
: after.
|
|
