Hot Spring Phytofuel  

TreeHugger has a note up ("Bacteria Makes and Stores Oil up to 25 Percent of Body Weight") about a form of bacteria that manufactures "light oil" - which seems to fit the "Phytofuel" vision that Geoffrey Chia talked about in the link I posted yesterday.

As reported in The Nihon Keizai Shimbun Friday morning edition--"Photosynthetic bacteria that synthesize light oil and store it internally in amounts totaling 20-25% of their body weight have been discovered living in a hot spring in Japan".

"Bacteria that synthesize heavy oil are known, but these are reportedly the first organisms discovered that manufacture light oil. When grown in a neutral culture fluid and exposed to light, the bacteria combine water and carbon dioxide to make molecules of light oil. Recovering the oil is simply a matter of collecting and smashing the bacteria".

While I'm quoting TreeHugger I may as well launch into another Viridian world roundup. Items of interest over the past week include a solar powered subway station opening in New York, more on indoor agriculture using grow lights, solar powered wineries in California, a blog about adding a solar-electric system to a house, an article on outdoor cooking using the sun, a solar powered tap and a advance in the production of "thin film" photovoltaic material.

Copper indium selenium (CIS) is considered the best-performing and most rugged "thin film" photovoltaic material, but has suffered from being far too difficult to produce. HelioVolt claims to have figured out a way to make the material relatively inexpensively and very quickly. CIS is able to be coated on building material for which silicon cells are unsuitable; if the HelioVolt claims are realized, this could be a big step forwards for greater application of building-integrated PV.

Finally, the Sierra Club has an article on energy efficient fans.

Harman's company, Pax Scientific, applied the spiraling geometric pattern of the whirlpool to the design of a domestic exhaust fan and created one that is half as noisy and three-quarters more energy-efficient. What he calls the "Pax streamlining principle" also applies to industrial mixers, automotive cooling systems, water pumps, even devices for circulating blood in the body. His company now leases its technology to the producers of a wide variety of industrial, commercial, and residential applications. His team of engineers is working on methods for applying spiraling geometry to wind turbines, aircraft fuselages, and marine propellers.

Increasing the efficiency of everyday technology is a huge boon for the environment, Harman points out. "If you use three-quarters less energy, then you have three-quarters less pollutants going into the atmosphere." He hopes that designs like his are also changing the way the world looks at nature. "Nature has already solved every problem humans face and have ever faced," he says. "If you see nature as our university, you're not going to burn down the university; you're going to protect it."

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