The Future is Oil Excreting Bugs

Necessity is the mother of invention, right?

LS9 is one of several companies in California's Silicon Valley taking a fresh look at alternatives to conventional crude oil.  But like many companies producing products that will require a complete reworking of the supply chain and economy (e.g., hydrogen fuel systems), LS9 is developing a product that is interchangeable with oil, what they refer to as "Oil 2.0".

The LS9 approach; genetically modifying single cell organisms that feed on agricultural waste and excrete carbon neutral crude oil.  Some truly exciting stuff, from the Times Online:

They start out as industrial yeast or nonpathogenic strains of E. coli, but LS9 modifies them by custom-de-signing their DNA. “Five to seven years ago, that process would have taken months and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he says. “Now it can take weeks and cost maybe $20,000.”

For fermentation to take place you need raw material, or feedstock, as it is known in the biofuels industry. The company is not interested in using corn as feedstock, given the much-publicised problems created by using food crops for fuel, such as the tortilla inflation that recently caused food riots in Mexico City. Instead, different types of agricultural waste will be used according to whatever makes sense for the local climate and economy: wheat straw in California, for example, or woodchips in the South.

... to substitute America’s weekly oil consumption of 143 million barrels, you would need a facility that covered about 205 square miles, an area roughly the size of Chicago.

That is the main problem: although LS9 can produce its bug fuel in laboratory beakers, it has no idea whether it will be able produce the same results on a nationwide or even global scale.

“Our plan is to have a demonstration-scale plant operational by 2010 and, in parallel, we’ll be working on the design and construction of a commercial-scale facility to open in 2011,” says Mr Pal, adding that if LS9 used Brazilian sugar cane as its feedstock, its fuel would probably cost about $50 a barrel.

As noted, one of the real advantages of this process is the ease of implementation.  An Oil 2.0 product, interchangeable with today's crude oil, has next to zero implementation cost.  Hydrogen, touted as a possible future fuel alternative comes with high manufacturing costs, high retrofitting or replacement costs for existing equipment and expensive delivery systems above and beyond the fuel cost itself. 

Whether this particular Oil 2.0 product is the real answer to the stranglehold of conventional crude oil remains to be seen.  But it sure is nice to know there is this kind of work being done and holding the promise of a reasonable alternative to conventional crude oil.