Article from Wired, “Fungi Make Biodiesel Efficiently at Room Temperature”
Wow! If your not a scientist then that’s all you can say when you read this, I”m sure there wil be a lot of fighting in the U.S. before there’s any available there. You haven’t read the article so I’ll give you a summary before you read the link (like always)
Instead of mixing the ingredients and heating them for hours, the chemical engineers pass sunflower oil and methanol through a bed of pellets made from fungal spores….Last Monday, Ravichandra Potumarthi showed off his work during a poster session at the International Conference on Bioengineering and Nanotechnology. After returning to his lab in Hyderabad, he was able to send out some pictures of his experimental reactor (shown on right) and the fungal pellets.Typically, biodiesel is made by mixing methanol with lye and vegetable oil and then heating the brew for several hours….Considering that a handful of chemical engineers can accomplish so much on what appears to be a shoestring budget, the future of alternative fuels looks pretty good — but maybe a bit slimy.
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Ecology, Energy, Global Warming
