The Peak Oil Crisis: More Disruptive Technology?

Yet another potentially disruptive technology has been announced.
This time a small company, Joule Biotechnologies, up in Cambridge MA says it has developed a process to produce hydrocarbon based fuels from carbon dioxide and water. As with any too-good-to-be-true announcement skeptics abound – just on general principles.

The process is centered on a “photobioreactor” (think a solar panel with liquid inside) which contains brackish water and a still secret microorganism that has been genetically engineered to absorb carbon dioxide and excrete hydrocarbons when subjected to sunlight.

The feedstock is plain old carbon dioxide – available anywhere fossil fuel is burned. This process does not require corn or cellulosic biomass such as switchgrass – only sunshine and CO2. The most interesting claim for this process is that the system may be capable of producing 20,000 gallons of fuel per acre per year. This is 50 times what corn-based ethanol can produce from an acre of corn.

Somebody with a mathematical bent calculated that if an area the size of the Texas panhandle were covered with photobioreactors, they could produce enough fuel each year that we could say goodbye to oil – drilling, depletion, OPEC, refineries, some forms of pollution, and all the rest. This is sounding much too good to be true for the company estimates the fuel could be produced for $50 a barrel.

Falls Church News-Press