Creating New Fossil Fuels

An article found HERE describes how a team of researchers at the University of Minnesota are creating their own gasoline. The team is using a special kind of bacteria to turn carbon dioxide into petroleum, using solar energy. This idea has earned this group of students a $2.2 million grant from the US Department of Energy. "Led by biochemistry professor Lawrence Wackett, the researchers are assembling a "co-culture" system in which two types of bacteria grow on opposite surfaces of a thin latex film. The bacteria on the upper surface will make glucose during photosynthesis. The glucose will then diffuse through the latex to the second bacteria, which will turn it into the building blocks of diesel and gasoline." The process looks like this:Led by biochemistry professor Lawrence Wackett, the researchers are assembling a "co-culture" system in which two types of bacteria grow on opposite surfaces of a thin latex film. The bacteria on the upper surface will make glucose during photosynthesis. The glucose will then diffuse through the latex to the second bacteria, which will turn it into the building blocks of diesel and gasoline. The group is currently working on getting a patent for their idea. It is ideas and initiatives like this that will help break our country's addiction to oil. If we can create our own clean fuel, not only will it help us reduce the prices we are paying at the pumps right now, but it will also help keep the environment clean. This process is using carbon dioxide which is the biggest problem of pollution. Carbon dioxide is the largest greenhouse gas in the atmosphere that is contributing to global warming. If we can take that carbon dioxide and turn it into fuel then we will be cleaning up the atmosphere and helping create fuel that our country needs. Steps like these are the only ones we should be taking when it comes to the development of energy in our country. We need to break away from oil and fossil fuels, and need to create alternate forms of energy that won't run out and cost us fortunes.