chenGOD Posted January 13, 2011 Share Posted January 13, 2011 That's not limitless. And while this is interesting and hopefully useful, there's very little information out there on its energy efficiency. How much cellulose does it require to fuel a bus? It appears to produce more of the fuel as a waste product after consuming sugars, so will we cultivate sugar? What will that do to land usage? Good steps though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kaini Posted January 13, 2011 Share Posted January 13, 2011 lisa, on this planet, we obey the laws of thermodynamics. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lumpenprol Posted January 13, 2011 Share Posted January 13, 2011 At the insistence of architect Jolyon Brewis (Grimshaw) the photo voltaic array on the roof of the core building was arranged in an inclined circle for aesthetic reasons. However this arrangement ensures that more than half of the panels never receive direct sunlight. At the time of installation the electrical engineer making connections deemed that it was not worth while to connect these panels, as their potential to generate electricity was so limited. The value of the panels at the time of installation was around £260,000. lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest fiznuthian Posted January 13, 2011 Share Posted January 13, 2011 That's not limitless. And while this is interesting and hopefully useful, there's very little information out there on its energy efficiency. How much cellulose does it require to fuel a bus? It appears to produce more of the fuel as a waste product after consuming sugars, so will we cultivate sugar? What will that do to land usage? Good steps though. well when the only limits are how much plant material you can grow/collect with the fungus doing all of the work for you it would be able to carry us very, very far into the future. fungi rarely need that much light at all, some just need water, others are a bit more specific. and cellulose is a fiber, not sugar. just about every vegetable and plant on the planet has cell walls comprised of cellulose, some plants are 90% cellulose. this strain of fungi feeds on living plants as well as dead matter, so given stable living conditions it would consume just about anything we throw at it containing cellulose. cultvating fungi is super efficient usually.. some fungi are hard to cultivate because they are particularly picky, but in controlled conditions where there are little to zero competing organisms and substrate (food) to eat, they'll just keep on eating and will not die. the cool thing is you can chop mycelium in half, then in quarters, then even further into 1000 chunks, and then let that 1000 expand onto new food sources.. you end up with 1000 seperate fungal organisms that will continue to consume food source. chop that 1000 into 10,000, let them feed, then chop that 10,000 into 1,000,000 and once again feed. once again, a theoretical 1,000,000 fungal organisms of the same species. commercial mushroom growers take advantage of this by chopping their spawn into pieces and making a fuck-ton of mycelium out of very little, quickly too as each chunk has the potential to eat more food and grow out at the same rate. the only limit here is how much substrate (food) you can throw at them, and that the substrate is sterile or in a lot of cases just being pasteurized is sufficient. but this particular strain as it digests dead plants and living plants and soil organisms as well, the digestive enzymes break down cellulose into what we just discovered is actually hydrocarbon fuel. when it comes to fungi, they really are low maintenance. the beauty of using useful mycological waste is it reduces energy spent on processing useless material to usable material considerably. "Then, when we examined the gas composition of G. roseum, we were totally surprised to learn that it was making a plethora of hydrocarbons and hydrocarbon derivatives. The results were totally unexpected and very exciting, and almost every hair on my arms stood on end." Strobel's team put the G. roseum through its paces in the lab, growing it on an oatmeal-based jelly and on cellulose. Extractor fans drew off the gases exuded by the fungus, and analysis showed that many of them were hydrocarbons, including at least eight compounds that are the most abundant ingredients in diesel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest fiznuthian Posted January 13, 2011 Share Posted January 13, 2011 even more information about this wonderful fungus.. The production of myco-diesel hydrocarbons and their derivatives by the endophytic fungus Gliocladium roseum (NRRL 50072) http://mic.sgmjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/154/11/3319 An endophytic fungus, Gliocladium roseum (NRRL 50072), produced a series of volatile hydrocarbons and hydrocarbon derivatives on an oatmeal-based agar under microaerophilic conditions as analysed by solid-phase micro-extraction (SPME)-GC/MS. As an example, this organism produced an extensive series of the acetic acid esters of straight-chained alkanes including those of pentyl, hexyl, heptyl, octyl, sec-octyl and decyl alcohols. Other hydrocarbons were also produced by this organism, including undecane, 2,6-dimethyl; decane, 3,3,5-trimethyl; cyclohexene, 4-methyl; decane, 3,3,6-trimethyl; and undecane, 4,4-dimethyl. Volatile hydrocarbons were also produced on a cellulose-based medium, including heptane, octane, benzene, and some branched hydrocarbons. An extract of the host plant, Eucryphia cordifolia (ulmo), supported the growth and hydrocarbon production of this fungus. Quantification of volatile organic compounds, as measured by proton transfer mass spectrometry (PTR-MS), indicated a level of organic substances in the order of 80 p.p.m.v. (parts per million by volume) in the air space above the oatmeal agar medium in an 18 day old culture. Scaling the PTR-MS profile the acetic acid heptyl ester was quantified (at 500 p.p.b.v.) and subsequently the amount of each compound in the GC/MS profile could be estimated; all yielded a total value of about 4.0 p.p.m.v. The hydrocarbon profile of G. roseum contains a number of compounds normally associated with diesel fuel and so the volatiles of this fungus have been dubbed ‘myco-diesel’. Extraction of liquid cultures of the fungus revealed the presence of numerous fatty acids and other lipids. All of these findings have implications in energy production and utilization. Researchers in government agencies and private industry have already shown interest in the fungi. A team to conduct further research has been established between MSU’s College of Engineering and researchers at Yale University. One member of the team is Strobel’s son, Scott, who is chairman of molecular biophysics and biochemistry at Yale and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor. The MSU-Yale team will investigate a variety of questions, including the genetic makeup of Gliocladium roseum. The main value of this discovery may not be the organism itself, but may be the genes responsible for the production of these gases. There are certain enzymes that are responsible for the conversion of substrates such as cellulose to myco-diesel. —Gary Strobel Scott Strobel said his team is already screening the fungus’ genome. Besides determining the complete genetic makeup of the fungus, they will run a series of genetic and biochemical tests to identify the genes responsible for its diesel-making properties. so the above quote discussing the research team's plans to not only investigate industrializing the fungus, but to find genome sequences responsible for the unique enzymes it produces. once the sequences are found it may be possible to recombinate them into other organisms and fungal strains as well.. to give you an idea of how far microbiology has come, recombination is already used to produce altered bacterial strains used in some industry. recently a team of researchers injected spider DNA sequences responsible for their strong, silky web into silkworms, a totally different insect. the result was silkworms not producing silk, but producing spider's silk.. some seriously strong shit poppin' out of those caterpillars. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chenGOD Posted January 13, 2011 Share Posted January 13, 2011 That's not limitless. And while this is interesting and hopefully useful, there's very little information out there on its energy efficiency. How much cellulose does it require to fuel a bus? It appears to produce more of the fuel as a waste product after consuming sugars, so will we cultivate sugar? What will that do to land usage? Good steps though. well when the only limits are how much plant material you can grow/collect with the fungus doing all of the work for you it would be able to carry us very, very far into the future. fungi rarely need that much light at all, some just need water, others are a bit more specific. and cellulose is a fiber, not sugar. just about every vegetable and plant on the planet has cell walls comprised of cellulose, some plants are 90% cellulose. this strain of fungi feeds on living plants as well as dead matter, so given stable living conditions it would consume just about anything we throw at it containing cellulose. From here: http://www.physorg.com/news144958975.html "We were very excited to discover that G. roseum can digest cellulose. Although the fungus makes less myco-diesel when it feeds on cellulose compared to sugars, new developments in fermentation technology and genetic manipulation could help improve the yield," said Professor Strobel. So it makes more bio-fuel when consuming sugars. Again though, we have to look at the efficiency of the total operation. Extractor fans to extract the gas, converting the gas to a usable fuel state, other variables - they need to be considered. You'll have to forgive my cynicism, it's just that we've seen so many "wonder replacements" come and go... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GORDO Posted January 13, 2011 Share Posted January 13, 2011 there's always the orbo: ; ) http://www.steorn.com/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Funktion Posted January 13, 2011 Share Posted January 13, 2011 all glory to the new wonder-fungus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest fiznuthian Posted January 13, 2011 Share Posted January 13, 2011 That's not limitless. And while this is interesting and hopefully useful, there's very little information out there on its energy efficiency. How much cellulose does it require to fuel a bus? It appears to produce more of the fuel as a waste product after consuming sugars, so will we cultivate sugar? What will that do to land usage? Good steps though. well when the only limits are how much plant material you can grow/collect with the fungus doing all of the work for you it would be able to carry us very, very far into the future. fungi rarely need that much light at all, some just need water, others are a bit more specific. and cellulose is a fiber, not sugar. just about every vegetable and plant on the planet has cell walls comprised of cellulose, some plants are 90% cellulose. this strain of fungi feeds on living plants as well as dead matter, so given stable living conditions it would consume just about anything we throw at it containing cellulose. From here: http://www.physorg.com/news144958975.html "We were very excited to discover that G. roseum can digest cellulose. Although the fungus makes less myco-diesel when it feeds on cellulose compared to sugars, new developments in fermentation technology and genetic manipulation could help improve the yield," said Professor Strobel. So it makes more bio-fuel when consuming sugars. Again though, we have to look at the efficiency of the total operation. Extractor fans to extract the gas, converting the gas to a usable fuel state, other variables - they need to be considered. You'll have to forgive my cynicism, it's just that we've seen so many "wonder replacements" come and go... interesting! well then, something i didn't know. ;) i was only able to read the abstract of their research paper and don't have access to my local uni's databases at the moment.. well i guess we're just going to have to feed it cookies? LOL yeah i totally understand your cynicism. it's very well possible that the scientific community overlooks this fungus. thankfully MSU just received a $2 million dollar grant to continue their studies. should scoot things along. :) what i think is most useful about a fungus like this is not even that it can produce hydrocarbon material on its own, but that it contains the DNA sequences necessary for doing so. we've really only scratched the surface of the fungal genome, let alone the animal and plant kingdom's genome. yet already we're putting DNA to the test in industrial applications, as well as all the weird wacky things microbiologists are toying with.. what's nice is that it works. get an organism that is well-equipped to transplant DNA sequences to carry and inject a chosen sequence into another organisms' genetic code and well, we could potentially do some seriously weird shit. commercial uses may not actually involve G. roseum but instead harbor G. roseum's genetic instructions for producing hydrocarbons. bacteria may actually be more useful for this, who knows. \ we spent billions of dollars cranking out factories that take lots of energy to convert crude oil to useable fuel, and somehow an organism exists that can do it not just on its own, but with plant fiber and well, apparently sugars. (nice find!) fresco talks a lot about using renewable energy sources, and nothing could really be anymore efficient than utilizing a natural cycle like this where fuel can be made from a waste that would get tossed and ignored otherwise. between solar power and discoveries like this, the solution to our energy crisis may be foreseeable in our future. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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