Solar Bacterium – Massachesetts Biotech Company Granted Patent to Convert Sunlight into Diesel Fuel

By Aaron B. Thalwitzer

Petroleum. From the ground to my gas tank. Well, kind of. There’s refinement. And the millions of years of pressure and heat. And the cartels.

But really, hydrocarbons like gas and diesel are just convenient sources of long-stored solar energy. But what with peak oil and all, the party’s not gonna last forever. Sure, once upon a time, you could go shootin’ at some food, and up through ground come a bubblin’ crude.  Oil, that is, black gold, Texas tea.  Not so much these days.

But, Joule Unlimited, a Massachusetts biotech company, is hoping that their latest patented technology (see U.S. Patent 7,785,861, filed Aug. 31, 2010), a genetically altered cyanobacterium, will convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into “alkanes,” which are ingredients of diesel fuel.

The company claims that the organism will produce clean, sulfur-free hydrocarbons that will replace diesel fuel. And who wouldn’t?  There’s money in them thar’ cyanobacteria!  But it isn’t usually so easy.

Other companies have already developed similar bugs that produce potentially useful ethanol from sugar and cellulose. But the ethanol made by these organisms is mixed with water.  Separating the fuel from the water requires a great deal of energy, usually too much to be economically feasible without major subsidies.  If it wasn’t for that problem, the once-imagined “Hydrogen Economy” might have been more than a relic of early-2000s political discourse.

But, Joule claims that in a test, the organism produced ethanol that wasn’t mixed with water, which, if true, could make all the difference.  Joule notes that by next year it will begin construction on a commercial plant (i.e. a field of cyanobacterial ooze), which could be up and running by 2012. The company predicts a yield of 15,000 gallons of diesel components per acre — far more fuel than an acre of corn grown for ethanol can produce.

And like solar cells, Joule’s process would be modular.  You could have a small, five-acre setup, or a factory-size slime field simply by making multiple copies of the smaller setup.

The organism from Joule produces the fuel using photosynthesis, which is seen as a promising field in biofuels.