Here’s another Vinod Khosla biofuels venture — this one betting on synthetic biology. In this case, to design bacteria that can cost-effectively convert sunlight + land to hydrocarbons.
…LS9, of San Carlos, CA, is using the relatively new field of synthetic biology to engineer bacteria that can make hydrocarbons for gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. Hydrocarbon fuels are better suited than ethanol to existing delivery infrastructure and engines, and their manufacture would require less energy. To make biological production of hydrocarbons a reality, the company is bringing together leaders in synthetic biology and industrial biotechnology.
LS9 is at a very early stage: the company was formed in 2005, but its existence was announced only this winter. It plans to engineer microbes to incorporate gene pathways that other microbes, plants, and even animals use to store energy…
The company has $5 million in funding from Khosla Ventures, of Menlo Park, CA, and Flagship Ventures, of Cambridge, MA. Its acting CEO, Douglas Cameron, is former director of biotechnology research at Cargill and chief scientific officer at Khosla Ventures. Flagship CEO Noubar Afeyan cautions that no one can tell the extent to which any biofuel will displace fossil fuels. “That is a subject of great debate and great prognostication,” he says. “The opportunity is so large that I don’t have to believe in much more than a few percentage points of market penetration for it to be worth our investment.”
…LS9 is counting on the fact that ethanol is not really the best biofuel. Del Cardayre notes that ethanol can’t be delivered through existing pipelines. It also contains 30 percent less energy than gasoline, and it must be mixed with gasoline before being burned in conventional engines. LS9’s fuels would have none of these disadvantages. What’s more, LS9’s fuels might be produced more efficiently than ethanol. For example, at the end of ethanol fermentation, the mixture has to be distilled to separate ethanol from water. LS9’s products would just float to the top of a fermentation tank to be skimmed off. Overall, the LS9 process consumes about 65 percent less energy than today’s ethanol production, the company says.
As I read that LS9 is projecting they can produce some sort of biofuel [of what energy content?], for 1/3 the energy input of which kind of ethanol. Not much we can get our teeth into, but I wish them success.
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