As effective as fossil fuels may be, their impact on the planet cannot be overstated. Now researchers at Berkeley Lab have coaxed bacteria into directly producing a new biofuel with an energy density significantly higher than jet fuel.
  • @gun@lemmy.ml
    2•2 years ago

    New technology is cool. But since it requires the bacteria to be fed with plant matter, this will compete with agriculture for food production if produced in scale.

    • @AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.ml
      1•2 years ago

      If we can manage to do this with the inedible parts of food crops, like the husks and stems, we’d be golden. Though, those parts usually only contain cellulose and not much else. If the process is glucose based, it’d be able to handle it no problem. If the process is fatty acid or protein based, that won’t work because the structural parts if plants contain very little fat and protein. And the fat and protein are also coincidentally the reasons the plant parts we eat are the parts we eat.