Oil’s Well

As mentioned here earlier, some scientists are closing in on a chemical process to extract climate-ruining emissions of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and change it back to fuel again. If that was groundbreaking news for the planet, here’s something better.

Well-known geneticist Craig Venter, famous for mapping the human genome, announced at a conference in California that his company is working on genetically modifying a micro-organism that would metabolise CO2 and turn it into fuel. Venter thinks he can begin production in 18 months.
Actually, organisms already exist that produce octane as waste products, but not in the vast amounts needed for a sustained supply. However, their metabolisms can be tweaked with synthetic chromosomes to consume more CO2 to make more fuel.

Interestingly, the limiting part of the equation isn’t designing the microbes; it’s the difficulty of extracting high concentrations of CO2 from the air to feed the organisms. As soon as that problem is solved the world can look forward to what’s already being called fourth-generation fuels which, unlike other biofuels, will not increase the cost of food or limit its availability.

Obviously, the CO2-fuel-CO2 cycle can never be 100 per cent efficient because of the laws of thermodynamics, but as the process gets increasingly optimised over a period of years it could reduce dependence on terrestrial sources of natural gas and oil dramatically.

Times of India