Another county heard from on alternative energy!
Friday, September 26, 2008 at 2:08AM ARTICLE: "Gut Reactions: The termite's stomach, of all things, has become the focus of large-scale scientific investigations. Could the same properties that make the termite such a costly pest help us solve global warming?" by Lisa Margonelli, Atlantic Monthly, September 2008, p. 76.
There's than Manhattan Project analogy again!
The Department of Energy starts up three Bioenergy Research Centers, which draw from seven labs, 18 universities, and a bunch of private companies to look at making "cellulosic ethanol competitive with gasoline within five years." $375M in all, focused on breaking down woods and grasses. Idea is to commercialize, so better analogy, says the author, is Bell Labs--me like that one!
Cool call-out text:
Offer a termite this page, and its microbial helpers will break it down into two liters of hydrogen--enough to drive six miles in a fuel-cell car.
Cool stuff.
Reader Comments (1)
The Weitzman organism, which evolved entirely naturally, consumes sugar and excretes a mixture of acetone, butanol and ethanol. During WW I, distilleries were converted to producing acetone by feeding these bacteria with molasses so that the acetone could be used in the production of cordite for the British dreadnaughts. Most acetone was produced that way until petroleum derived acetone became cheaper in the late 1950s, early 1960s.