"Venter Fuel"

March 08, 2010

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In this Q&A with the Wall Street Journal, Craig Venter, who has recently partnered with ExxonMobil and BP, says that it will be at least 10 years until you have gasoline made by synthetic organisms in your car's tank. "Scalability is the biggest issue," he says. "If we can't generate billions of gallons of fuel per year per facility, it's not going to work. But I think with the Exxon engineering team and their money, we have a chance to scale it up." With BP, Venter is "[looking] for new biology deep in the Earth, to take coal as the starting material, metabolize the coal into methane in the Earth and just isolate the natural gas."

Craig Venter is a smart guy,

Submitted by mitchell.martin on Mon, 03/08/2010 - 16:36.

Craig Venter is a smart guy, so why is the focus on producing more gasoline or methane instead of, say, hydrogen?

The answer to the question

Submitted by Dan Seligson on Tue, 03/09/2010 - 02:20.

The answer to the question must be that we don't have a hydrogen economy, and we won't for a very long time.

A problem with hydrogen is

Submitted by wsalo on Tue, 11/13/2012 - 12:53.

A problem with hydrogen is the large volume transportation. This could be overcome by the use of small modular nuclear reactor (SMNR, eg, Hyperion Power) to make the hydrogen. By strategic placement of such facilities the manufacture of the hydrogen could take place near the site of use or refueling of vehicles. The SMNRs would generate electricity to run refrigerators to condense water from the air that could be electrolyzed to form hydrogen and oxygen.

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"Venter Fuel"

Craig Venter is a smart guy,

The answer to the question

A problem with hydrogen is

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