Sugar to Methane?

ok ill give ya a break but you did say it's not a 'sugar' in the general usage of the term due to it's very low rate of digestibility.

roll eyes was IDK just thought that was a funny statement no insult intended

it is more than one and at first i was about to agree with you. i thought that there was only one also but had my doubts and checked to be sure.

you were flying off the hammer once again challenging someones elses comments when you yourself know little about the subject. not that i do. i know some and am willing to check before scoffing at someones comment. as well as learn more.

billy t appears to know far more than i. but i met a skin head that knew more about hitler and the nazi party, get my drift.

no offense billy T haha

 

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You can be one amusing person at times.

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Like butchering a common expression "flying off the handle" (which makes sense) into "flying of the hammer" (which makes little sense.)

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It might just surprise you what I know and what my background is. You are still VERY new here and I've no interest in posting any kind of biography.

Here's another little tidbit for you since it seems your memory is so poor. It was in THIS very thread that I apologized to you and you accepted it. So just scroll back up a little and you will find that I have no problems admitting when I've made a mistake (unlike many here).

 

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why not just stick bags on cow's asses to collect there waste and collect methane that way as a bi product of the food and leather industries

 

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Oh, man! I ran a cow-calf operation as a sideline for many years and I can tell you that nobody is going to want to do that! Washing down the floors of dairies and feedlots is one thing but it all stops there!

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read only, did you know they actually had to introduce the dung bettle from eroup (or england or where ever) to Australia to deal with the cow shit problems we had building up?

its one of the few times an introduced species has had its intended enviromental benifit (the other one would be rainbow trout i guess which were introduced for fishing i belive but have fitted in with the natural eccosystem very well)

 

Nice work - very commendable!

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Again I do not know the answers. There is a Austrailian company, very tiny I think and has no stock for sale

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that has an interesting idea for greater economy and efficiency in biofuel production. Their name is "Solazyme."

They claim to have bioenginered some common algee so that it lives on organic material, especially sugar solutions. I.e. it grows in the dark. It makes fats and they are easily harvested and converted into high quality diesel - I saw a short video on them at Frobes or Morningstar yeaterday.

It is a very interesting idea - perhaps a major (like HUGE) break thru as all you do is make a big vat, throw in some organic waste and draw off these organisms (as fast as they grow) into a second vat where they are mashed up and let the oil come to the top of this second vat. Skim it off and put it in barrels at an estimated production cost of about $40/ barrel!

I serously doubt that they can process celulose so easily. (Not sure they are even claiming to be able to use any organic feed stock, but they did mention "switch grass" in the video.) It does seem likely that crushed sugar cane juice could be converted into biofuel more cheaply via some "clever" bugs or algee without the heat of distilation to separate H2O and Etoh. Oil and water separate by gravity, and we need not pay for that.

Why wait millions of years for dead grass etc to become oil? Let use GM to do in a week! Also no need to drill deep into the Earth where the ancient ocean beds were. If I can not buy share of Solazyme* perhaps I should sell my sell my shares in drilling companies and their equipment suppliers?
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*If this tiny company - just a few test tubes from the looks of the video - can grow only on borrowed money, the owner will be world's richest man in a decade or two. Dam good Idea - hope it is not a scam.

 

In rural India some little girl would steal them. Several sometimes follow the cow around to catch the stuff before it hits the ground. It is their only cooking fuel and young girls are not good for anything else. This may be only history now. - I hope so, but customs and habits are hard to change. If it is still done, India should adopt Brazil's "Bolsa Familia" idea. - Poor families get monthly payments IFF their kids are in school and get the vaccinations they need. Every economist thinks it has been a great success, economically and socially, here in Brazil and many other coutries are coping it.


A post in the BRIC+ thread gives some of the details as how the gap between rich and poor has been reduced in Brazil, mainly by "Bolsa Familia."

 

haha i did type hammer :shrug: the hammer has a handle? :shrug:

i have no idea were that came from.

i could have said french benifits.

would have been funnier

 

blooooper-------- i think you would be surprised how often the introduction of a species was to be beneficial... most turn out to be failures, but not all.-------------

my bad i misread your statement.

yes they are often disasters..... including rainbow trout

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at least here in the US.... the rainbow and brown trout (rainbows are from the western US) have threatened the native brook trout in the east. but the worse have been the brown trout (from europe) pushing out the native species in the western US. some have become or were thought to be extinct. conservationists are currently killing all fish species in some rivers and streams to eradicate browns and bring back the native species.

 

switch grass has come up often. i really like the results. easy growth with no pesticides no herbicides no water no plowing and little or no fertilizers. at least that's the plan.

i read where they were pelleting the grass for use in pellet stoves for heating. cant remember exact but i think that the estimate was less than an acre to heat an average sized home.

the cellulose projects converting to methane are supposed to the best results. something like 25 times more energy than put in. this is where im sure that charonz got his "numerous" bacteria. they are using more than just the bacteria that break down cellulose to create the methane. the mixtures of these bacteria are what effects the end results.

 

i may be misunderstanding you. are saying that cruzten is wrong?

i thought that he was more interested in the corn for bio fuels not cane?

 

I have not read everything, I just got stuck on this.

Oh dear. What a stupid, stupid statement. Cellulases are bloody wide spread in bacteria. Essentially every single plant pathogen possesses it as well as a bloody heap of soil bacteria. It is really thought to be non-digestible to metazoans (though some animal cellulases have been reported). Mind you, by far not all of the bacteria use the sugar for methanogenesis as it only occurs under certain (anaerobic) conditions
The few bacteria that buckybeam gave were actually methanogens (that is, bacteria that produce methane). Just from the top of my head and without really thinking in addition there are:

Pseudomonas sp.
Xanthomanas sp.
Clostriudium sp.
Thermobifida sp.
Erwinia sp.
Fibrobacter sp.
Campylobacter sp.
Bacillus sp.
Ruminococcus sp.
Sorangium sp.

that I know of that have cellulolytic activities. As you can see, even in this small example I gave, a lot of bacterial groups are covered. It is likely that every single group possesses at least a number of members as cellulose is so ubiquitous. But then I am no microbiologist and cannot name every single last of them. Just check the databases for cellulases.
So challenge all the way you want. But pleaaaaase. Read a little bit before you do. Just a little (and I usually do not mean Google or Wikipedia, but for that common information likely both are actually usable...).


Billy:

I have to edit this to be more clear. Technically in common (and even in some chemical use) sugar often only is referred to mono-di or mabye oligosaccharides. In broader terms however, it also often refers to anything that is built up from this basic sugar components. It might depend a bit whether you are a biologist or a chemist. In any case, polysaccharides like e.g. starch (potatoes contain a lot of them, but are, of course, not sugars themselves), chitin, cellulose or carageenan, are built up from simple sugars and are therefore only a polymer of these. Physiologically these will end up in the usual carbohydrate pathways once the polymer is split up. In the end sugar is chemically a somewhat loose term and the correct denominator would be mono- di-...oligo- and then polysaccharides (though again, the borders between oligo- and polysaccharides are also often ill-defined). In lab lingo one would often refer to all of these as sugars, depending on the context (that is, if the length really is important).

More specifically for methanogenesis. Just to make it clear, bacterial methanogenesis is a form of anaerobic respiration. The sugars in question are used as both, carbon source, but also (and more importantly for the process) as electron donors.

 

Yes, the best new companies usually dont need public financing...they can attract all the private capital they need, while maintaining their independence.

Here are the two videos available on Solazyme:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyXk7Mk1mas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhcMlU2bQDs

Growing algae in the dark solves the number one problem of opacity, meaning no turbulence is necessary. But I dont see any numbers on their site about the net energy gain.

I still think methane is somewhat better for transportation, being cleaner burning and easily transported through existing pipelines...no tanker trucks required.

You dont even need to extract it...it just bubbles to the surface.

 

That is not quite correct. It is non-living enzymes that cut the complex polisacarides into more simple surgars, unfotunately usually into a mix of them, not just sucrose (or any other simple sugar) for which living yeasts can convert into alcohol (ethanol or methanol, most desirable ones as biofuels) Each sugar needs it own specialized yeast.

You might want to lean more by visiting the website of one of the US leaders. (Selected as one of 5 for DoE grants and few weeks ago by BP in a multi-year partnership) at http://www.verenium.com. (I own stock in them, Ticket VRNM, but have lost nearly half its value on paper now. - I bought small amount as a "back up" on much larger holding in Brazil's second largest conventional sugar cane to Etoh and sugar producer, San Martinho.)

Here is condensed blurb from one of the sub pages:

" Verenium is the first publicly traded, fully integrated, next-generation biofuel company, ...Verenium is ... only company with the full complement of “field-to-pump” capabilities. This includes: growing energy crops, developing enzymes, processing biomass into fuel and, ultimately, selling it. ...Verenium pioneered the discovery and development of unique, high-performance enzymes for converting cellulose into fermentable sugars... Verenium also uses proprietary microorganisms, called ethanologens, for the cellulosic ethanol fermentation process and proprietary equipment for ethanol production. The Company is now in the start-up mode at its Jennings demonstration-scale plant, which is the first of its kind* in the U.S. ...The facility marks a milestone not just for the Company, but for the nation, in our efforts to diversify our energy supply."
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*They had to state that way as several others have long existed using destructive distilation processes to make many products form wood chips etc. including some Etoh. this blurb does not mention it but a more advance plant operates in Japan using thier enzymes under license. They supply enzymes to many others, including Bunge (fool oils) which started in Brazil and I also own shares of. (Bunge, as have all my "Brazil stocks," has been much nicer to me than VRNM has been.)

 

Ehm Billy, I am not sure whether you two are talking about the same. I think buckybeam referred to methanogenesis (which is completely done by bacteria). But even in yeast driven alcohol fermentation, the cellulases are usually of bacterial origin. In the example you gave they added propriety microorganisms(probably bacterial strains with certain overexpressed cellulases) to create the simple sugars for further fermentation.

 

Yes but you will need to spend energy compressing it for the pipeline. BTW your second link is "no longer available" but there are "related links" listed at You tube (I amost never go there - seem to mainly find garbage, now if some "bugs" could work on that - the energy problem is solved.

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)

 

I think you are correct about two diffent subjects. VPRM started (as Diversa in a way I thought smart: asking nature how to do it well by disecting the guts of termites.) Diversa & Celunol merged to make Verenium. I am not sure they still use the bugs to make the enzymes, but probably they do have "super bugs" now. The enzimes are costly still.

Their 1.4 million gallons / years plant seems to be proceeding on schedule. I think they will run it a few months, work out the feed stock supply contracts with LA & MS farmers and then break ground for the comercial scale plant. VPRM knows what they are doing, I think, as they already market to others enzymes and sell some enzyme products directly to farmers (some to mix with cattle food, I think) that they make and bag. The new deal with BP will give them global reach, big time management skills and a steady stream of cash. I am not selling now, even thought I need some losses for tax reasons.

Take a look at Carcano's post 54 first link if you have time and comment.

 

i was commenting on the combination of different bacteria and how the percentages of different bacteria have a direct effect on the percentage on methane produce.one such article suggests that an increase of the methanogen barkeri increased the methane yield by over 5%. also the additions of other bacteria that do not act directly on cellulose but break down results from the breakdown of cellulose.? does that make sense? i guess a cocktail so to speak?

really the only experience i have in this subject (types of bacteria and such) is with bacteria in anaerobic reactors used for converting nitrates. one autotrophic using sulfur the other hetero trophic using ethanol as a carbon source.

 

Yes I understand that now - thanks to Charon. I am too fixated on Etoh to have noticed when skiming your post. Sorry about that.