Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff from house stuff works dot com where
Speaker 1: smart happens. Hi, I'm Marshall Brain with today's question, how
Speaker 1: could we eliminate fossil fuels and all the carbon emissions
Speaker 1: that they create? So last week you may recall that
Speaker 1: I did a post on Jewel Unlimited, a company that
Speaker 1: claims that in two thousand and twelve, they will be
Speaker 1: able to produce virtually unlimited liquid hydrocarbons, namely diesel fuel,
Speaker 1: using bacteria. The company further claims that they'll be able
Speaker 1: to do this at a rate of fifteen thousand gallons
Speaker 1: of diesel fuel per acre, and that the diesel fuel
Speaker 1: will cost the equivalent of oil if it were at
Speaker 1: thirty dollars per barrel. Now, this is miraculous if they
Speaker 1: pull it off, and I did talk about it in
Speaker 1: my podcast. I also posted it on the blog. And
Speaker 1: what was interesting was the reaction to that. Almost universally,
Speaker 1: people thought one of two things. Either that the oil companies,
Speaker 1: because they want to make billions of dollars a year
Speaker 1: in revenue from oil, are going to come in and
Speaker 1: crush this effort in any effort like it, so that
Speaker 1: none of these uh bacteria generated or algae generated liquid
Speaker 1: hydro carbons ever make it to market, or people thought
Speaker 1: that this company is lying in order to raise money,
Speaker 1: that they are just making up these claims and that
Speaker 1: there is absolutely no truth to it. I don't think
Speaker 1: their claims are false, because there are lots of companies
Speaker 1: pursuing the same kind of activity, either in the bacteria
Speaker 1: or in the algae space, and the number of companies
Speaker 1: would imply that there really is something there. But the
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory thing is kind of interesting if you think
Speaker 1: about it, because historically there is a fair amount of
Speaker 1: evidence that the oil company do participate in conspiracy theory
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. For example, there was the dismantling of
Speaker 1: the rapid transit system in Los Angeles. There was prohibition
Speaker 1: which many think was put in place not because of
Speaker 1: the problems of drinking alcohol, but because of the problems
Speaker 1: of making ethanol as a fuel. Things like that do
Speaker 1: make you think. So I was thinking about it, and
Speaker 1: I was thinking, Okay, let's say that these conspiracy theories
Speaker 1: are true. And there were so many people that came
Speaker 1: up with this kind of comment that, you know, it
Speaker 1: made me think. This is a deeply seated belief in
Speaker 1: the United States. So let's say these theories are true.
Speaker 1: How could you get around it? What could you do
Speaker 1: that would make it impossible for the oil companies to
Speaker 1: stop the effort to create liquid hydrocarbons from bacteria or algae.
Speaker 1: My thinking took me in this direction. One way to
Speaker 1: get around the conspiracy would be to widely publicized instructions
Speaker 1: for a fuel production system that any normal, do it
Speaker 1: yourself type maker person could easily build in his or
Speaker 1: her backyard. Imagine if a system like that existed, You
Speaker 1: invest a couple of hundred bucks, and suddenly you can
Speaker 1: make your own fuel, essentially for free, in your backyard.
Speaker 1: If thousands of people were doing this, there would be
Speaker 1: no way to squash that movement, and that would give
Speaker 1: small companies the cover they need to grow fuel in
Speaker 1: bigger batches, and soon fossil fuels would be a thing
Speaker 1: of the past. The funny thing is, the more I
Speaker 1: think about this, the more realistic it seems. This might
Speaker 1: actually be a project that falls within the abilities of
Speaker 1: normal do it yourself folks, and more importantly, the maker community.
Speaker 1: Think about the pieces needed to pull this off. First,
Speaker 1: we need the ability to grow algae. Now, this is
Speaker 1: not a complicated problem. Anybody who's left a bucket out
Speaker 1: on the back poor that has rainwater and it has
Speaker 1: seen algae grow right before their very eyes. So any
Speaker 1: kind of large plastic barrel or an inexpensive above ground
Speaker 1: swimming pool can be used to grow algae. Algae like
Speaker 1: lots of other plants, produce oil. You know, corn produces
Speaker 1: corn oil, soybeans produced soybean oil. So algae produces algae oil.
Speaker 1: We next need a way to separate that oil from
Speaker 1: the algae. Now this isn't trivial, but it's not impossible either.
Speaker 1: You can dry the algae and then you can press
Speaker 1: the algae sort of like you press olives to get
Speaker 1: olive oil. You can press the algae to get the
Speaker 1: algae oil out of it. There's no magic here, and
Speaker 1: the sun can do the drying, so it's not like
Speaker 1: we need energy to dry out the algae. Now with
Speaker 1: that oil, you can do one of two things. You
Speaker 1: can burn oil directly in a diesel engine. You have
Speaker 1: to do a little bit of modification to heat the
Speaker 1: oil up, especially in winter, or it's not gonna flow
Speaker 1: properly and it's gonna come up the engine. But when
Speaker 1: mr diesel invented the diesel engine, he intended vegetable oil
Speaker 1: to be the source of fuel, so this is not
Speaker 1: an unusual thing to do to a diesel engine. But
Speaker 1: if you don't want to use liquid vegetable oil in
Speaker 1: your diesel engine, then you have the option of taking
Speaker 1: that algae oil and turning it into biodiesel. This again
Speaker 1: is not trivial, but it's also not impossible, and it's
Speaker 1: something that just about anybody could do in their garage
Speaker 1: if they wanted to. Now, whether you use straight vegetable
Speaker 1: oil or bio diesel in a car, you have successfully
Speaker 1: grown fuel in your backyard at low cost on your own,
Speaker 1: and there really isn't any way for anybody to stop
Speaker 1: you from doing this. If we wanted to turn this
Speaker 1: into a widespread do it yourself movement, what would we
Speaker 1: have to do? What's missing? There's really only two things.
Speaker 1: The first is a set of complete step by step
Speaker 1: instructions with all the kinks worked out, so that someone
Speaker 1: can pick up these instructions and start making fuel in
Speaker 1: their backyard without it being a real problem, or without
Speaker 1: them making a lot of mistakes, or without anything blowing up,
Speaker 1: which is impossible. You can't really blow anything up while
Speaker 1: you grow algae and press oil out of it. But
Speaker 1: it would be nice to know how to make the
Speaker 1: press and what to feed the algae and so on,
Speaker 1: so step by step instructions would help. The second thing
Speaker 1: we need is good strains of algae that produce a
Speaker 1: lot of oil. This, too, is something that the maker
Speaker 1: community could grab. Ahold of the discovery and or the
Speaker 1: creation of algae strains is something that's fathomable. One way
Speaker 1: to do it would be to go out into nature
Speaker 1: and gather different strains of algae from different ponds, separated
Speaker 1: into its different species, grow them, and see which strain
Speaker 1: of naturally occurring algae produces the most oil. It's also
Speaker 1: getting easier and easy year for makers to do biotech
Speaker 1: at home or in rented facilities because biotech equipment and
Speaker 1: biotech procedures have gotten a lot less expensive and a
Speaker 1: lot easier. So you could imagine a part of the
Speaker 1: maker community going out and trying to create to bioengineer
Speaker 1: their own algae strain that produces a lot of oil.
Speaker 1: Then it would just be a matter of making these
Speaker 1: high oil algae strains available to people so that they
Speaker 1: can use them in their backyard algae growing pools. So
Speaker 1: just imagine what would happen if this could be pulled off,
Speaker 1: If the instructions could be developed, if the processes could
Speaker 1: be simplified, if a strain of algae could be found
Speaker 1: that produces a really high quantity of oil per cubic
Speaker 1: meter of water, then we would be on the cusp
Speaker 1: of the elimination of fossil fuels. It's one of the
Speaker 1: most important problems humankind needs to solve, and it would
Speaker 1: be great if do it yourselfers and the maker community
Speaker 1: could make it happened. For more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com and
Speaker 1: don't forget to check out the brain stuff blog on
Speaker 1: the how stuff works dot com home page. You can
Speaker 1: also follow brain stuff on Facebook or Twitter at brain
Speaker 1: stuff hs W. The How Stuff Works iPhone app has arrived.
Speaker 1: Download it today on iTunes.