At some point we are going to run out of oil and thus gasoline. It’s just fact. Now whether that is in our life time or not is a whole different story that I don’t care to get into as it boarders more on politics then factual ideas. What we do know is that our current methods of getting fuel are not so earth friendly. That is a bad thing as I’m generally not a fan of wrecking the place you live and for at least the foreseeable future most of us still have to live here on earth. So we need to find better ways to take care of our planet and scientists in the UK may have just found such a way.
Ok no the hot rod above has nothing to do with it but some day it may be running on gasoline produced by bacteria. Now this is something that has been done before but this time it is being done in a form identical to commercial grade gasoline meaning this stuff can be run in our cars. That is pretty awesome. Of course there is a catch, there always is….
The catch is this will have to be done on a truly massive scale to make any meaningful dent in fossil fuel consumption. The scientists working on this project will have to scale up this method greatly but also find a “fuel” for the bacteria to feed on that is plentiful. They have such a fuel in mind, it’s manure. We certainly produce plenty of that. This could kill two birds with one stone in reducing landfill wastes, or human waste, while producing gasoline for our cars. This is all very promising to me. Maybe, just maybe it means we can keep our big V8’s after all.
Just so you don’t think I’m getting all soft and greenie on you here’s another hot rod.
If you want to read more about the research head over to New Scientists to read the report.
Source: New Scientist