Subject:  Viridian Note 00016: Bio-Refineries

Key concepts:  bio-refineries, ethanol fuel, genetic 
technology, microorganisms, cellulose, garbage, CO2

Attention Conservation Notice:  it's somewhat technical; 
there are speculative elements added; it's hard to 
prettify a report about big rusty factories eating garbage 

Links: none

Entries in the "Big Mike" Viridian Design Contest:
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From: dhlight@mcs.net^^^* (David Light)

David Light remarks:  I thought a reminder of cheerful 
biotech trends was in order. The interesting thing about 
this  recent New York Times ethanol article (as opposed to 
the 100 others I've skimmed over the last 20 years) is 
that serious things are being financed with (mostly) 
private capital at a time when oil prices are in the 
basement.

"Plant Will Make Fuel Oil From Agricultural Garbage"

By MATTHEW L. WALD

(((bruces remarks: I have cut the living daylights out of 
Mr Wald's fine article and added a number of comments of 
my own.)))

      "ENNINGS, Louisiana.   The plant was opened in 1977 
to refine  crude oil into gasoline, but when that proved 
unprofitable,   it was converted in 1981 to run on 
molasses, and then in 1987, on   grain.  Bankruptcy 
followed."

(((The bankruptcy of *all* oil refineries is on the 21st 
century's agenda.  We might replace them through clever 
design, or we might simply run out of oil, but oil 
refineries are goners either way.  It's wise to consider 
alternative uses for all this  refinery hardware.)))

     "Now, with rust on its tanks and pipes and grass 
growing through   the gravel on its paths, construction 
workers are converting it  yet again, to make fuel alcohol 
from agricultural garbage. (...)  The new  owners of the 
plant here, BC International Corp., with a subsidy  from 
the U.S. Energy Department and help from a genetically 
engineered, patented bacterium, hope they are on the cusp 
of a new era."

     (((Staggering back from the brink of the grave, a 
rust-eaten, Gothic,  Cajun oil refinery becomes home of 
gene-spliced voodoo gumbo.  It's a new era all right -- 
the Dawn of the Dead.)))

     "'It is a bio-refinery,' said Stephen Gatto, 
president and chief  executive of the company.  (...)

     "'The input costs are close to zero,' said Dan 
Reicher, assistant secretary of energy. 'In some cases 
they are less than zero,  because people are paying to get 
rid of these materials.'"

     (((The economics of "less than zero" costs have a 
nice Internet IPO feel to them == "We're selling dollars 
for ninety cents each, and making it up on market 
share!")))

     "And if it works, he said, the technology could also 
reduce the accumulation of gases in the atmosphere that 
are thought to cause climate change, and could lower smog.  
(((It'll be a sign of intellectual life in American 
journalism when this "thought to cause" phraseology 
finally vanishes.  Yes, the climate is changing, and yes, 
gases are doing it.  Cigarettes cause cancer.  Politicians 
have sex.  Let's move on.)))

     "The plant here in this south-central Louisiana town 
will run on  bagasse, a part of the sugar cane plant 
usually considered useless, as well as on rice hulls, a 
currently useless part of the rice plant. Later, it may 
digest sawdust as well."

     (((The American  sugar industry is notorious for its 
price supports.  Rice hulls and sawdust, however...  as 
feedstock for a value-adding process, those are hard to 
beat. There are few nations on earth untroubled by rice 
hulls or sawdust. Or both.)))

    "Around the country, energy experts have their eyes on 
clippings from suburban lawns, prairie grasses and other 
woody materials,  as fuel for the new process. (...)  In 
the current generation of ethanol plants, the fuel is the 
corn kernel; plants using the new technology could digest 
the cob and  the stalk as well. (...)"

    (((We should definitely keep a wary eye out for any 
entity that digests corn, plus its cobs, plus its 
stalks.)))

     "These materials are made of cellulose, which 
contains large  amounts of sugar, the basic ingredient 
required for alcohol production. But the sugar in 
cellulose is in a chemical form that traditional 
fermentation processes, which use yeast, cannot digest. 
(...)  BC's plant uses a bacterium, KO11, also used in the 
pharmaceutical industry, to break down the sugars.

     "The natural bacterium on which KO11 is based likes 
to eat  sugars and produces a chemical called acetic acid.  
But then came gene splicing.  Dr. Lonnie Ingram, a 
microbiologist at the  University of Florida's Institute 
of Food and Agricultural Sciences, borrowed four genes 
from another organism, Zymomonas mobilis, to make the 
bacterium produce alcohol  instead.

    "Around the country, researchers are working with Z. 
mobilis to find other approaches, but BC International's 
will be the first commercial plant to make ethanol from 
woody material. The plant will take about 18 months to 
build and will cost $90  million, including $11 million 
from the Energy Department.

   "Existing ethanol plants do little to save energy or 
reduce carbon  build-up in the atmosphere. They can use up 
to seven gallons of  oil or its energy equivalent to 
produce eight gallons of  ethanol, experts say. The energy 
is used by the coal in power plants and  diesel fuel in 
tractors that plant, fertilize and harvest the  corn, and 
in petroleum-based fertilizer. But using waste for fuel ==   
especially waste that might otherwise be burned and in the 
process dump carbon dioxide back into the air == could 
allow production of seven gallons of ethanol from one 
gallon of oil."

     (((Biomass is an attractive technology, especially 
for continental superpowers with plenty of spare real 
estate, but these hidden carbon subsidies are troubling.  
Cheap oil can make fake "alternatives" look better than 
they are, lowering costs but spewing CO2. Smart germs are 
no panacea.  There are probably many ways to use cheap 
commercial bacteria profitably, while creating CO2 
pollution even worse than cheap crude oil.)))

        "And whatever the feedstock, whether trees or 
grasses, using it makes room for new growth, which will 
draw carbon back out of the atmosphere. This would be 
true, backers point out, wherever ethanol from cellulose 
might catch on, in this country or abroad, especially the 
Third World, where demand for motor fuel is rising."   
(...)

     (((Third Worlders have a healthy skepticism for  
clever technologies that are said to be a bonanza for poor 
people, even though they never quite work out  in the 
daily life of rich people.)))

     "The plant here, on the banks of the Mermentau River, 
is designed to produce 20 million gallons a year (...)  
Several others using cellulose   are planned around the 
country. One company, Masada Resource, of Birmingham, 
Ala., says it will break ground next year on a plant in 
Middletown, N.Y., that will use the cellulose in  
household garbage. In that case, sales of ethanol will not 
turn a profit but will help offset the cost of garbage 
disposal, in a  region where a large landfill is scheduled 
to close soon. It will not use KO11, but a different 
proprietary process for rendering the cellulose into 
digestible form."
(...)
     (((This article has many fine specifics, but contains 
one mysterious oversight.  The subject under study here is 
a bug that makes booze out of sawdust.  This is a 
troubling prospect.  Once Cajun bootleggers swipe a few 
thimblefulls of stray K011 out of the plant, we can expect 
a swamplands moonshine bonanza the likes of which the 
world has never seen.)))

  Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company

*******************************************************
WHY GENETICALLY RETROFITTED REFINERIES ARE NOT VIRIDIAN
*******************************************************

They cost 90 million dollars each.

American sugar cane is a boondoggle. 

Ethanol projects are not new and have a bad track record.

It's hard to make agricultural waste and rotting organic 
garbage seem sexy.

Ethanol in fuel is a piecemeal improvement in the existent 
refinery/gas station/ internal combustion complex.

Has K011 been properly "designed for evil"?  How are we 
supposed to police new germs?  Through patent and 
copyright law?  That's not much help in the thriving black 
markets for illegal drugs or pirate software. 

   The abuse potential for illegal stills that eat sawdust 
and lawn clippings would seem to be pretty extreme. 
Brewer's yeasts turn up in the heart of federal prisons; 
even prisoner-of-war camps have illegal stills. 
Prohibition wars leave police forces reeling and riddled 
with corruption.  This is a brand-new drug technology, and 
a potential security nightmare.

***************************************************
WHY GENETICALLY RETROFITTED REFINERIES ARE VIRIDIAN
***************************************************

They might realistically improve the CO2 situation.

They embrace decay.

They eat what they kill:   it's thrifty to re-use 
abandoned oil refinery stock, especially since we'll 
eventually be stuck with all that hardware anyway.

Incremental improvements may not be glamorous, but they 
are by no means to be despised.  If ethanol works without 
requiring glamour, we can save our time and attention for 
promoting something else.

A working, profit-making genetic bio-refinery would open 
the door to *custom-designed* genetic bio-refineries.  
These could be highly novel and unusual structures with a 
revolutionary impact on the chemical and refining 
industries generally.  To see daylight, though, they need 
a money-making app in the contemporary world.


FORMATTING NOTE:  Peter Denning (pjd@cne.gmu.edu^^) has 
pointed out that it would be easier to ignore Viridian 
Notes if they came with titles.  We will be titling the 
Notes henceforth, and will probably go back and 
retrospectively title the earlier ones.  Bruce S