http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle4133668.ece

I'm certain I've seen a thread on this before, but I can't find it. Should be interesting to see what comes of this, if anything.

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Spock Jenkins of the Vulcan Jenkins'.

So, what's the catch?

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"All your bias are belong to us." Ara Pacis
"A witty saying proves nothing." Voltaire

Why should there be a "catch"?

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

The catch is scaling up the operation so that it can produce enough fuel to be useful on a national (US) level. Apparently you'd need a plant the size of Chicago to service US consumption.

Still its a brilliant start.

I'm not sure about that. There's been plenty of bug conversion ideas, but I think this is the first time I've heard of the excretions being a direct product rather than a convertable resource.

I would assume the same as any other upcoming or promising technique. Time and money.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

I'm sure that one refinery for the whole country would be of similar size!

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

The bacteria are going to get out and take over our country and turn all the farm land into oil and we won't have any food or water because the oil will contaminate the water and the bacteria will eat the food! AAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!

Let me get Crichton on the phone...

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Spock Jenkins of the Vulcan Jenkins'.

At least. Prolly alot bigger.

I think the catch is that you are still dependant on the energy contained in the feedstock and growing plant material to feed the bacteria is still going to be a relatively inefficient process. They mention that the process is very much like ethanol production, but more efficient because they don’t need to distill the final process.

I suspect bio diesel from algae will prove superior because the algae absorbs sunlight to turn into fuel, and only requires nutrients, where this bacteria needs to get all it’s energy from the food it’s given.

There is a lot of energy left in human poop. However, on the bright side, this means we don't have to lug around an appendix the size of a koala.