Micro-Organisms and Our Energy Future

There are hundreds of tiny little single cell organisms that play huge roles in our life. There are good bugs and there are bad bugs. While the bad bugs get most of the press, I would rather talk about the role of the good bugs.

If you are into a green economy or if you like cocktails like me, you know that yeast is a good bug. The vast majority of fermentation processes are based on yeast doing their thing converting sugars into alcohols. Did you know the certain bacteria can do the same thing? Well they can! If you don't want to know never ask how Tequila fermentation differs from scotch.

Microbiologists have been playing around with bacteria for along time and can make these little micro organisms do some neat tricks. They can train the bacteria to eat just about anything and are getting pretty good at making them poop the right stuff.

One of the real neat things about the micro-organisms is that algae can work on one process and pass the ball to bacteria to take it in for the touchdown. The algae are real cool because they use photosynthesis. They take carbon dioxide and mix with a one-part chlorophyll and two parts sun to make an energy cocktail. How microbiologists train the little buggers is beyond me. I can't even get the dog to stay.

Everybody that is going nuts over the greenhouse gases and global warming should read up on this stuff. Here is just one site. General Motors built a proto type green Hummer. It was green but it dang sure wasn't a Hummer! This green Hummer had algae filled doors, roof and side panels that were basically leaves. The leaves generated power in sunlight that ran the Hummer. Now, you would have to have very thick skin to drive this green Hummer in city traffic. It got exceptional fuel mileage but was a bit low on the performance and babe appeal side. I get enough one-fingered salutes driving my 34-foot motor coach at 60 down the road. So you won't see me driving any butt ugly, slow, "Little Shop of Horrors" car around anytime soon.

Anyway, the whole micro organism thing got me going because algae and bacteria combined in a process could convert atmospheric CO2 into fuel while sequestering CO2. Since the Virgin Airways guy is offer a $25,000,000 dollar reward for the best method for reducing CO2, I might just be having myself a few micro orgasms.