[Peakoil] Butanol as substitute?

[Keith Thomas]

And I asked a microbiologist for his expert perspective. This is what he wrote:

"Keith
"These are very important and dangerous developments.
 
"Clearly plants produce sugars from the sun, water and CO2 and different bacteria have evolved different specific enzymes to break down glucose to pyruvic acid and then to a range of different derivative organic compounds. Thus Aerobacter uniquely produces butanene diol, while others produce, alcohol, acetic acid, succinic acid, ketones etc etc.
 
"We can obviously exploit these organisms and enzymes to make different derivative compounds some of which may have higher energy densities than alcohol or be more suitable as transport fuels. However they still all rely on glucose as the primary substrate and thus its production by photosynthesis and therefore the effectiveness and adverse impacts and sustainability of the farming systems used to produce that sugar substrate.
 
"What is dangerous is Homo hubris assuming that their needs for transport fuels transcends other biological realities about these organisms, processes and products such as health risks. While methanol and formaldehyde are natural microbially produced products from similar processes the reality is that they are carcinogenic to humans. Butanaol if used in mass has similar if not fully explored human health risks and implications. So before assuming that we can exploit each natural bio-technology and product for our convenience suggest we have to critically examine why and what we are proposing and its full risks.
 
"So far we have released some 70,000 organic chemicals into our diets and bio-sphere with perhaps 1/1000 having been adequately studied for their full risks and impacts. Given that 1 out of 3 Americans can now expect to get a cancer during their life, rates which are thousands of times greater than natural, when will we learn that we dont run biology or the world and to the micro-organisms that do, we are just substrate."

-----------------------------
Keith Thomas
www.evfit.com
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On 04/03/2011, at 9:18 AM, Michael Skeggs mike at bystander.net wrote:

Maybe, but butanol smells *bad*.
Like rotting garbage. The anti-whaling protestors' stink bombs they
throw at the whaling ships are butanoic acid (oxidised butanol), and a
common prank among chem students is to place a drop on somebody's lab
coat, so they stink for days.
Regards,
Michael Skeggs

On 3 March 2011 21:44, Jenny Goldie <jenny.goldie at optusnet.com.au> wrote:
> 
> Butanol as Gasoline Substitute from Bacteria
> Butanol may be used as a fuel in an internal combustion engine. Because its
> longer hydrocarbon chain causes it to be fairly non-polar, it is more
> similar to gasoline than it is to ethanol. Butanol has been demonstrated to
> work in vehicles designed for use with gasoline without modification.
> University of California, Berkeley, chemists have engineered bacteria to
> churn out a gasoline-like biofuel (butanol) at about 10 times the rate of
> competing microbes, a breakthrough that could soon provide an affordable
> transportation fuel. The potential feedstocks are the same as for ethanol:
> energy crops such as sugar beets, sugar cane, corn grain, wheat and cassava,
> prospective non-food energy crops such as switchgrass and even guayule in
> North America, as well as agricultural byproducts such as straw and corn
> stalks.
> http://www.enn.com/business/article/42416
> 
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