June 4, 2009 • 24 mins
Hydrocarbons are simple compounds that help fuel the modern world, but they're not really a sustainable resource. Explore new energy solutions, starting with biohydrocarbons, in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
from House Stuff Works dot Com. I am welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, a k A compass head
with me is Charles W Chuck Chuckers Chucky Bryant. Yes, Yes,
(00:26):
Chuck Chuck Chuck Chuck, Chuck, Chuck Chuck Chuck Chuck Chuck
Chuck Chuck Chuck Chuck bra Bow. We have Matt to
guest producer. Matt again, handsome guest producer man. He's a
dream vote, he is Pay attention, Matt. You might learn
a thinker two. So don't be mean to Matt. Chuck.
I'm not supporting it. I guess you want to get
to it. Yeah, I think there's no point trying to
(00:47):
be around the bush. Look like you're dragging a little
bit today. Okay, No, dude, I'm up like uh. I
can never think of the analogies bright eyed and bushy tailed.
I'm up like a light switch up, like a hair
hairclub for men. Customer terrible. Okay, Chuck, do you know
what one of the simplest organic compounds found on the
(01:09):
planet are school me. I'm about to chuck. We're gonna
call those hydrocarbons for the remainder of this podcast, right,
this little science. But hang with us. You might learn something.
It is, but it's actually really exciting science. It is.
I know, I'm aroused. I am too, I can tell alright, so, Chuck, Um,
hydrocarbons are, as I said, very simple. It's just a
(01:30):
chain of hydrogen and carbon atoms, pretty simple mixed together.
But for all their simplicity, they pack a heck of
a punched they do. Actually, as a matter of fact,
they're really ubiquitous as far as the stuff we use
to fuel our global economy goes, meaning that hydrocarbons are
actually active ingredients in petroleum, coal, natural gas. So basically
(01:56):
these are the things that give us the energy that
we use to live our lives. Right, it's a good
way to say it. Thanks, Chuck is at the end.
That's it, alright, Thanks, thanks for joining us. Um, So, Chuck,
there's a couple of problems with what we're getting our
hydrocarbons from these days, and the first one is the
(02:16):
first one is that eventually we're going to run out right,
that's a pretty well known fact, and it's troublesome. It's
not necessarily a fact, my friend. I don't want you
to get unnecessary listener mail. It's actually a hotly debated topic,
peak oil theory, which frankly I think we should do
one on because it's actually really interesting. Right, you have
a good article on that. Thank you, and thank you.
(02:37):
I have to say, I just want to go ahead
and say it now to Matt Baker. You know Matt
over in development. He is actually a fanatic about energy
in the future of energy use and exploring other ways,
and he's actually huge skeptics. So he helped lend me
a little bit of healthy skepticism for this one. Right,
So it's good. He's fighting a good fight. So but
(02:58):
I'm of the opinion that we are running out if
we haven't started to already hit oil. Um, so we're
going to run out. But we still need this stuff.
And then the other problem is this the the internal
combustion engines that we currently have are not very efficient.
Now they're not we get uh the average from what
I understand, according to the e p A about of
(03:21):
the potential energy found in like the gas or the
diesel or whatever we put into an engine actually becomes
usable energy or energy that makes your car go down
the road or powers your air conditioner right right. The
rest of it's lost, all sorts of different things, heat, whatever.
But one of the one of the ways that energy
is lost is through unburnt u or incompletely burnt hydrocarbons, right,
(03:47):
that comes right out of the old tail pipe. Yeah,
and what happens chuckers Well, I was talking to Emily
about this last night, trying to break this down in
my research, and basically the easiest way to say it
is these petroleum based fuels um burn less efficiently because
they're more complex. And that's really all there is to it.
Things like ethanol. If you if you looked at the
(04:09):
what's it called, not the helix, but the little the bond, Yeah,
the bond. It's actually just when you look at the
two compared to each other, they're very much more simpler. Sure,
so that that's really all there is to it. It
burns cleaner because more of it gets burnt initially, there's
nothing left over, right, So we burned these these these hydrocarbons,
and when we separate the bonds, it creates this, uh,
this reaction where we get energy, right, But if all
(04:32):
the bonds aren't broken, then you have some that, like
you said, come out of the tail pipe. And let's
say you have a carbon atom that interacts with the
air and it gets an oxygen molecule attached to it.
All of a sudden you have carbon monoxide, which is bad. Uh.
Ozone is another one, right, which is not to be
confused with the ozone in the stratosphere of the ozone layer.
(04:54):
It's actually good thing. It is no and it actually
is the same thing. It's just to times and where
it is exactly right. Um. And then of course you
you also have um carbon atoms attached to one another
make soot. So there's a there's a lot of problems
with hydrocarbons the way we're using them right now, but
(05:14):
there are solutions to this problem, exciting solutions. Yeah. Again,
I'm arounded by these. Yeah. I was talking the same
thing to Emily last night about this, that there are
actually a lot of different ways that we can make fuel.
It's just that the system we have in place has
been there for so long. It's kind of with the
politics and everything, it's just well entrenched. So all these
(05:35):
new methods are you know, it's kind of an efficient
system because it's been in place for so long, and
all the systems are in place, so starting up these
new methods is kind of expensive and it's extremely expensive
time consuming. Plus, you know, we've gotten like you said,
we've gotten really good at extracting oil from the ground. Yeah,
even from the sea floor. Remember when we did the
(05:56):
Huuans Oceans podcast. We've gotten really good at getting oil
out of the earth right right, because we've been doing
it for so long. Now, all of a sudden, it's
becoming painfully clear that we need to come up with
another solution and fast or else. If we have hit
peak oil already, we're our global economy is gonna come
to a screeching halt and then hopefully we'll have enough
momentum to pick it up with minimal um stoppage. But
(06:21):
probably not. We're probably gonna be in big trouble because
we we I think we waited a little too long.
Hopefully not. I'm not much of an alarmist, really, but
I don't think the world's gonna end in I don't
think so either. But okay, so what's what's leading the pack? Chuck?
Could it possibly be bio hydrocarbons, yes, Josh, and what
are the Oh you tell me genius. Alright, Jerk, I'll
(06:43):
tell you what a biohydrocarbon is. It's a hydrocarbons derived
from plant life, right, converting plant sugars essentially, which is
not necessarily just sugars either. We'll get into that later.
It was just one of the many. Yeah. See, this
is where I started to get confused. I know, let's
just let's just put it out there, Chuck, come on,
laid on everybody laid on me. Well, I mean like,
there's the Chuck was frustrated earlier because we're researching this
(07:07):
and he was like, what is going on? Like is that?
Are we looking at ethanol? Are we looking at camelina? Like?
What are we what which catalyst works best? And we
both figured out that what's going on is no one
has this magic bullet yet, right Chuck, which actually makes
the whole thing that much more exciting. Is kind of
like watching a horse race, like, have has the technology
(07:29):
been developed yet? We just need to make it more efficient.
Is there a plan out there we didn't we haven't
even heard of that's actually going to rescue the world. Well,
maybe a little hint for the I know, I like
that one, the Patagonian one. Yeah, but there's research on
all kinds of fronts, which is the which is the
good part. So like you said, it's kind of a race,
you see, you can do it the cheapest and most efficiently,
uh and the quickest. There's there's one that's already pretty
(07:51):
well established. That's cellulistic ethanol and Chris Putt and I
actually did a podcast many many moons ago on that,
but I want to have a quick refresher. And also, um,
I think biohydrocarbons is pretty much interchangeable with the word
biofuels from what we can tell right, um. But with
cellulosic ethanol, all it is Uh, it's it's ethanol which
(08:13):
you can use to power and engine, especially when it's
been modified to be powered by ethanol. Um. And it's
just created by fermenting extracted sugars from cellulose and lignant,
which provides structure and and shape and form to sell
walls of plants, like the plant stands up thanks to that. Uh.
And basically what they do is they throw a bunch
(08:34):
of this and it's called biomass feedstock. When it's used
to make ethanol. Right, They throw it in this vat,
throw some microbes in there. The microbes go to town,
eat this stuff, make these biproducts waste products, and then
they're they're catalyzed with other enzymes and they go through
this process and process and out the end comes the
two final products, which are water and ethanol. Right. And
(08:57):
actually there's a real advantage to the because we're already
throwing away four thirty million tons of plant waste every year.
We're just thrown it away saw dust with chips, stock
stuck in the thing. Yeah, but stuff we just can't use.
We can if we make cellulistic ethanol out right, right,
it's just garbage before, But then you know, once we're
(09:17):
using it, like I said, it becomes biomassive feed stack.
Here's the problem. You were saying earlier that it's it's
a very expensive process. It's I said, it's not very efficient.
These are all extremely accurate. And the reason why is
um Like those microbes I mentioned that are changing the
cellulose into sugars to be fermented, those die after a
(09:39):
very short period of time and they have to be replaced.
So that's an added cost right indeed, Okay, Indeed, microbe
replacement is actually that's a very expensive process. Microbe replacement.
It's a killer and it kills you every time. And
plus also remember I mentioned that the two end products
are water and um ethanol. They mix together really easily,
(10:00):
which is good. No, it's not, no, no, because then
you have to extract the ethanol from the water, which
is costly and time consuming, and it's an added step.
Right yeah, what they're trying to do with some of
these processes is limit these steps, which makes it obviously cheaper.
Plus also, even once you do extract the ethanol from
the water and you are transporting ethanol, uh say, to
(10:21):
your local gas stations via pipeline the way we do
it with oil now we try we shoot it through pipes.
Refined gas, we shoot it through pipes and it's separated
by columns of water. Will be like gas water, gas water,
gas water. You can't do that with ethanol. We have
to come with a completely new technology for it because
it'll just mix with the water and the stuff that
(10:42):
comes out the end would have to be extracted again,
right right, So there's a bunch of challenges to cellulistic ethanol. Really,
what it comes down to is it's just too expensive
to replace oil right now. Okay, so again, what's the solution? Well,
which one? Let's let's start rapping. What do you want
to talk about? Camelina or camelina is like the the
(11:04):
wonder plant, right, Well, perhaps camelina is Uh, if you
want camelina should go to Montana first, or Idaho was
at the other Origi grower, but yeah, Montana seemed to
kind of stand out above the rest is like the
big potential producer for camelina, right right. One of the
cool things about camelina is gonna be grown in a
(11:24):
rotation with wheat crops. Yeah, we grow a lot of
wheat right Actually, um, it's been shown and it's fallow.
You use it on the fallow land, right and right now,
they just let weeds grow in a huge tract of
wheat crop land. But if they were placed with camelina, actually,
when they plant wheat the next season, it has about
(11:44):
more increased yield than when they just use weeds this season.
Before you want to talk yields, camelina yields roughly double
what soy yields. And soy you know, is the wonder
plant everyone knows. And the oil that Camelina produced is
more cold resistant than your average biodiesel and resistant drought
(12:06):
resistant since it grows in marginal lands as well, it
requires very little fertilizer or insecticide. So that's huge too. Well,
it sounds like this is the answer. Wait it gets
even better, chuck more. Um, to get the Camelina oil
that's used to produce bio hydrocarbon fuel, right, Um, you
(12:29):
actually have to crush the plant matter and then you
extract the oil. The stuff that's left over actually makes
an excellent livestock feed, so you've got all that extra
income right there. Right. Yeah. Well, they've done some studies
on the emissions from let's say jet fuel made by Camelina.
(12:50):
They call it green jet fuel, and there is an
eighty four point four percent savings compared to regular petroleum
jet fuel in greenhouse gas emissions. Right yeah, that's that's
way huge. Uh. And if you're talking biodiesel and exhibits
savings of over regular das over petroleum based desil and
(13:11):
even more. You said that they were doing tests with it, right,
they're actually conducting real flights with it. So of fifty
percent jet fuel like petroleum based jet fuel and fifty
um biojet fuel green jet fuel. That's awesome, And so
it's actually keeping the plane aloft and I believe more
energy efficient. Yeah, well, nobody wants to use you know,
(13:32):
no matter how environmentally friendly a fuel is, everybody's gonna
hate it if planes crashed and you and when you
fill it up with it. Right, and we're talking about Montana.
The state of Montana alone could support between two and
three million acres of this stuff, producing how many millions
of barrels of oil? Well, two hundred to three hundred
million gallons of oil a year. Here's the rub that
(13:54):
farmers grow education. They don't know a lot about it
at this point. They don't. But even if every farmer
in Montana we're producing the maximum amount of camelina oil
every year, right, three million gallons a year, three or
four I think. See. The problem is is here in
the US we use twenty one million barrels of oil
(14:15):
a day. So even if Montana produced the maximum muld
of camelina oil, we use it up as a nation
in just a few days, tops, you know what I'm saying.
That's a huge problem with that. Plus also camelina goes
through a much similar process or a similar process to
um cellulistic ethanol. They've got these extra expensive steps, right,
(14:39):
So clearly we've got the we have the cleaner burning
fuel part down right, because it's producing simpler biohydrocarbons, so
they're burning more efficiently and they're they're burning up completely,
so there's fewer emissions, except there's carbon dioxide emissions still, right,
(15:00):
and a truly perfect alternative fuel. The two waste products
you're gonna be water and uh, carbon dioxide. The problem
is we're still emitting carbon dioxide, right, Actually hydrogen would
be the way to go, sure, but yeah please yeah,
So that you just scoffed, so like that. It was
(15:20):
a pretty clear scoff, wasn't it. So um, we still
have this this hurdle, and one of them is the
making a fewer step process, which would be inherently less expensive,
right right. Are you talking about the mystery fungus? No, yes, sure,
not a mystery fungus, but super fungus. Well, that's that's different.
I mean, that's like just going to the source to
(15:43):
find uh, you know, I don't know, maybe some sort
of fungus that produces diesel on its own without any steps.
Shall we talk about that? Is there such a thing?
I think? So they have found this in uh, Patagonia,
is that right in the rainforest? And it is called
help me out here, io clad cladium roseum. I think
(16:03):
that's probably pretty close chuck cladium roseum or g roseum. Yeah,
let's just call it that, or g ros or just
drows let's call it g roseum. And they've discovered this
fungus kind of by accident or not kind of accident,
very much by accident, which is the best part. Yeah,
they were running around the Patagonian rainforest exposing tree fungus
(16:24):
to antibiotics to see what happens, right, a bunch of hippies,
And what they found out was this g rose e
um grew in the presence of these gases when everything
else was dying away. So you kind of went, hey,
what a good stuff exactly? And then they looked a
little closer and what, well are you saying? The best
part is that you can grow this in labs. Sure,
(16:44):
that's one part. I think The best part is the
fact that this thing naturally excretes diesel. Well, sure, diesel fuel.
There's a fungus out there that excretes what we would
just call diesel fuel, which is nuts. That's what you're
going the obvious round. I thought, Oh, yes, a talk
about like cutting steps out. I mean, you just exposed this, uh,
(17:04):
this stuff to antibiotics, right, and it starts producing diesel
directly from cellulose, yeah, but from eating on a tree, right,
And like you said, they've already managed to to reproduce
it in the lab right right, and they call it
mica diesel. Yeah, and yeah, they can create this stuff
in the lab. It's crazy, which you know this this
is one of the big exciting things about g. Rose
(17:28):
e um. Well plus also g roseum, as if it
couldn't get any better, produces potent antibiotics as a byproduct
as well and introducing diesel and animbiotics. Well, so why
don't we just go this route? I think we should
bow down to the g. Roseum master, which will clearly
dominate the human race within the next fifty years. And
(17:49):
this is only like six months ago that this they
figured the stuff out. It's a brand new dawning of
a new age. Maybe, well it was twelve months ago
they found out, but it took him six months to
get out of the forest, and they were running the
whole time to tell everybody they were Yeah, they kept
falling down. Yeah. Yeah. So what I want to know, Well,
the good part is that they can actually manufacture it,
because that's what I was worried about. Was cool they
(18:10):
found the saying, but it's in the rainforest. So then
I thought, well, that just means you're gonna start raping
the rainforest. Yeah. I thought the same thing too, And
I have to say I was to see that they
synthesized it already or and that's awesome, figured out how
to manipulate it science exactly precisely. Also, there's a there's
a movement of foot to cut out extra steps in
the ethanol process or you know what converting camelina oil
(18:34):
the usable um diesel fuel. Uh, and that's using different
kinds of catalysts um. There are these guys that M
I T that are using um metals like platinum and copper.
I believe right to to catalyze these things. What what
happens is basically from what I understand, and again this
is m I T. And I definitely did not attend
(18:56):
M I T. A bunch of dummies, Yeah, what are
you talking about? Um? Basically, you take this uh this um,
this cellulistic ethanol, say right, and you run it over
these catalysts that are very high heat, so like you
have ultraheated platinum. And what happens is when it goes over,
it actually converts the chemical composition of the ethanol or
(19:19):
not the ethanol, the the main ingredients used in ethanol,
the cellulose, let's say, um, and it converts it into biohydrocarbons.
Right there. There's no other steps. Actually there are two steps,
but they're actually very quick and um it's thousands of
times faster I understand than microbial fermentation. You can produce
(19:39):
this stuff constantly, and it can be recycled exactly. The
catalyst can be reused because you're not using microbes, you're
using metal, and platinum stands up to heat pretty well, right.
Even better, the stuff that comes out on the other end,
the usable fuel, actually separates from the other biproducts, so
it's just sitting there on top making extraction easy. And
(20:00):
the stuff that remains on bottom is actually highly usable
in the manufacture of plastics too. So it seems to
me like We're getting closer and closer and closer. The
problem is is I think, um, we humans tend to
rest on our laurels. We know how to get oil
out of the ground. I don't. I don't see any
oil missing. What's the big problem? Until it all up,
(20:22):
it's going to take someone of real prominence to come
out and be like you idiots were in big trouble
for anybody to wise up and really start funding this stuff.
But if if some great thinker needs to come along
and demand it, who maybe you? I demand that everyone
start funding this stuff, right, and then say, and you
(20:43):
are as you're being handcuffed. That's fine. Sure, I've been
handcuffed before and I don't doubt it. So that's bio
hydrocarbons that it? Sure? Well, I'm very impressed, dude. You know,
chemistry and maths stuff kind of flies over my head.
I did my best to hang in there. But you
did great, Chuck, You did great. So, Chuck, we don't
have anything to plug. We're done with biohydro carbons. That
(21:07):
can only be one thing, my friend listener many exactly. So, Josh,
I'm just gonna call this Italian listener mail because it
comes from an Italian. Uh might throw in a word
or two in there. He doesn't say anything about the punts.
So this from Stephan in Italy, and this is in
(21:29):
regards to our propaganda podcast which was just recently. Really yeah. Uh.
He wants to point out that, first of all, I'm Italian,
so sorry for the bad English. His the Prime Minister
of Italy, Silvio Silvio Bert Berlusconi. He is apparently quite
the propagandist, is what this Stephan says. And he says
(21:52):
here we can only dream about propaganda being illegal. I
want to argue, I don't want to argue through a
Riduccio at Hitler hum. But the current situation Italy is
worse than Nazi Germany. That's what he says. I didn't
realize the chuck you're gonna give the Italians after its Well,
maybe you don't want the Italians. The night is what
(22:12):
they call him evidently, and he says, yes, the k
and I p HT is what the Italian media calls
the Prime minister. And he owns all private free televisions
and has shares and I think he means TV stations,
and he has shares in the paper viewings. So being
the Prime minister, he can influence the public TV channels.
(22:33):
He illegally became the owner of nearly every publisher or
newspaper in the country, and he sues everyone who allows
himself to criticize him little Italian influence there on the
speak uh, he says, there are plenty of cases of
phone interceptions and or admissions that he influenced people in
some news and or journalists are being ridiculously one sided.
(22:55):
You never hear anything bad about the government or the
Prime minister, and protest stars in opposition are always displayed
as fools. So basically it sounds like Italy is in
some big trouble over there. So he goes on for
a while, but I'll just kind of skip down to
the end. There are two free news sources in some
radio stations that we have called radical radio and the Internet.
(23:16):
But they're working on some laws to ban blogs and
already have some in place to sense or certain sites.
So I just wanted you to know there's probably the
best modern day propagand you will find Stephen in Italy,
and Stephen, they're coming for you as we speak. Yeah, sorry, Stephen,
but I think that Chuck and I both say, hats
off to you for being the voice of Oh, I
(23:37):
don't know reason over there in Italy, Chuck, I feel
like we're complicit and smuggling information out of Italy and
then broadcasting it around the world. I didn't realize it's
like this. I've been to Italyan. I thought it was
a pretty cool place. I didn't get that sense. But
did you also know did you see that one email
from a listener in China who said that our blog
is outlawed there? Yeah, I like being banned. That is
(23:57):
the coolest thing I've ever heard. We're like right there
with the Ali Lama. Sure, yeah, all right, Well if
you want to compare chucking out of the Dali Lama, um,
let us know what's going on in your country, or
just to say hi, You can send an email to
stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com, but don't
get caught. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
(24:22):
is it how stuff works dot com. Want more how
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works dot com home page. Brought to you by the
reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
from House Stuff Works dot Com. I am welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, a k A compass head
with me is Charles W Chuck Chuckers Chucky Bryant. Yes, Yes,
(00:26):
Chuck Chuck Chuck Chuck, Chuck, Chuck Chuck Chuck Chuck Chuck
Chuck Chuck Chuck Chuck bra Bow. We have Matt to
guest producer. Matt again, handsome guest producer man. He's a
dream vote, he is Pay attention, Matt. You might learn
a thinker two. So don't be mean to Matt. Chuck.
I'm not supporting it. I guess you want to get
to it. Yeah, I think there's no point trying to
(00:47):
be around the bush. Look like you're dragging a little
bit today. Okay, No, dude, I'm up like uh. I
can never think of the analogies bright eyed and bushy tailed.
I'm up like a light switch up, like a hair
hairclub for men. Customer terrible. Okay, Chuck, do you know
what one of the simplest organic compounds found on the
(01:09):
planet are school me. I'm about to chuck. We're gonna
call those hydrocarbons for the remainder of this podcast, right,
this little science. But hang with us. You might learn something.
It is, but it's actually really exciting science. It is.
I know, I'm aroused. I am too, I can tell alright, so, Chuck, Um,
hydrocarbons are, as I said, very simple. It's just a
(01:30):
chain of hydrogen and carbon atoms, pretty simple mixed together.
But for all their simplicity, they pack a heck of
a punched they do. Actually, as a matter of fact,
they're really ubiquitous as far as the stuff we use
to fuel our global economy goes, meaning that hydrocarbons are
actually active ingredients in petroleum, coal, natural gas. So basically
(01:56):
these are the things that give us the energy that
we use to live our lives. Right, it's a good
way to say it. Thanks, Chuck is at the end.
That's it, alright, Thanks, thanks for joining us. Um, So, Chuck,
there's a couple of problems with what we're getting our
hydrocarbons from these days, and the first one is the
(02:16):
first one is that eventually we're going to run out right,
that's a pretty well known fact, and it's troublesome. It's
not necessarily a fact, my friend. I don't want you
to get unnecessary listener mail. It's actually a hotly debated topic,
peak oil theory, which frankly I think we should do
one on because it's actually really interesting. Right, you have
a good article on that. Thank you, and thank you.
(02:37):
I have to say, I just want to go ahead
and say it now to Matt Baker. You know Matt
over in development. He is actually a fanatic about energy
in the future of energy use and exploring other ways,
and he's actually huge skeptics. So he helped lend me
a little bit of healthy skepticism for this one. Right,
So it's good. He's fighting a good fight. So but
(02:58):
I'm of the opinion that we are running out if
we haven't started to already hit oil. Um, so we're
going to run out. But we still need this stuff.
And then the other problem is this the the internal
combustion engines that we currently have are not very efficient.
Now they're not we get uh the average from what
I understand, according to the e p A about of
(03:21):
the potential energy found in like the gas or the
diesel or whatever we put into an engine actually becomes
usable energy or energy that makes your car go down
the road or powers your air conditioner right right. The
rest of it's lost, all sorts of different things, heat, whatever.
But one of the one of the ways that energy
is lost is through unburnt u or incompletely burnt hydrocarbons, right,
(03:47):
that comes right out of the old tail pipe. Yeah,
and what happens chuckers Well, I was talking to Emily
about this last night, trying to break this down in
my research, and basically the easiest way to say it
is these petroleum based fuels um burn less efficiently because
they're more complex. And that's really all there is to it.
Things like ethanol. If you if you looked at the
(04:09):
what's it called, not the helix, but the little the bond, Yeah,
the bond. It's actually just when you look at the
two compared to each other, they're very much more simpler. Sure,
so that that's really all there is to it. It
burns cleaner because more of it gets burnt initially, there's
nothing left over, right, So we burned these these these hydrocarbons,
and when we separate the bonds, it creates this, uh,
this reaction where we get energy, right, But if all
(04:32):
the bonds aren't broken, then you have some that, like
you said, come out of the tail pipe. And let's
say you have a carbon atom that interacts with the
air and it gets an oxygen molecule attached to it.
All of a sudden you have carbon monoxide, which is bad. Uh.
Ozone is another one, right, which is not to be
confused with the ozone in the stratosphere of the ozone layer.
(04:54):
It's actually good thing. It is no and it actually
is the same thing. It's just to times and where
it is exactly right. Um. And then of course you
you also have um carbon atoms attached to one another
make soot. So there's a there's a lot of problems
with hydrocarbons the way we're using them right now, but
(05:14):
there are solutions to this problem, exciting solutions. Yeah. Again,
I'm arounded by these. Yeah. I was talking the same
thing to Emily last night about this, that there are
actually a lot of different ways that we can make fuel.
It's just that the system we have in place has
been there for so long. It's kind of with the
politics and everything, it's just well entrenched. So all these
(05:35):
new methods are you know, it's kind of an efficient
system because it's been in place for so long, and
all the systems are in place, so starting up these
new methods is kind of expensive and it's extremely expensive
time consuming. Plus, you know, we've gotten like you said,
we've gotten really good at extracting oil from the ground. Yeah,
even from the sea floor. Remember when we did the
(05:56):
Huuans Oceans podcast. We've gotten really good at getting oil
out of the earth right right, because we've been doing
it for so long. Now, all of a sudden, it's
becoming painfully clear that we need to come up with
another solution and fast or else. If we have hit
peak oil already, we're our global economy is gonna come
to a screeching halt and then hopefully we'll have enough
momentum to pick it up with minimal um stoppage. But
(06:21):
probably not. We're probably gonna be in big trouble because
we we I think we waited a little too long.
Hopefully not. I'm not much of an alarmist, really, but
I don't think the world's gonna end in I don't
think so either. But okay, so what's what's leading the pack? Chuck?
Could it possibly be bio hydrocarbons, yes, Josh, and what
are the Oh you tell me genius. Alright, Jerk, I'll
(06:43):
tell you what a biohydrocarbon is. It's a hydrocarbons derived
from plant life, right, converting plant sugars essentially, which is
not necessarily just sugars either. We'll get into that later.
It was just one of the many. Yeah. See, this
is where I started to get confused. I know, let's
just let's just put it out there, Chuck, come on,
laid on everybody laid on me. Well, I mean like,
there's the Chuck was frustrated earlier because we're researching this
(07:07):
and he was like, what is going on? Like is that?
Are we looking at ethanol? Are we looking at camelina? Like?
What are we what which catalyst works best? And we
both figured out that what's going on is no one
has this magic bullet yet, right Chuck, which actually makes
the whole thing that much more exciting. Is kind of
like watching a horse race, like, have has the technology
(07:29):
been developed yet? We just need to make it more efficient.
Is there a plan out there we didn't we haven't
even heard of that's actually going to rescue the world. Well,
maybe a little hint for the I know, I like
that one, the Patagonian one. Yeah, but there's research on
all kinds of fronts, which is the which is the
good part. So like you said, it's kind of a race,
you see, you can do it the cheapest and most efficiently,
uh and the quickest. There's there's one that's already pretty
(07:51):
well established. That's cellulistic ethanol and Chris Putt and I
actually did a podcast many many moons ago on that,
but I want to have a quick refresher. And also, um,
I think biohydrocarbons is pretty much interchangeable with the word
biofuels from what we can tell right, um. But with
cellulosic ethanol, all it is Uh, it's it's ethanol which
(08:13):
you can use to power and engine, especially when it's
been modified to be powered by ethanol. Um. And it's
just created by fermenting extracted sugars from cellulose and lignant,
which provides structure and and shape and form to sell
walls of plants, like the plant stands up thanks to that. Uh.
And basically what they do is they throw a bunch
(08:34):
of this and it's called biomass feedstock. When it's used
to make ethanol. Right, They throw it in this vat,
throw some microbes in there. The microbes go to town,
eat this stuff, make these biproducts waste products, and then
they're they're catalyzed with other enzymes and they go through
this process and process and out the end comes the
two final products, which are water and ethanol. Right. And
(08:57):
actually there's a real advantage to the because we're already
throwing away four thirty million tons of plant waste every year.
We're just thrown it away saw dust with chips, stock
stuck in the thing. Yeah, but stuff we just can't use.
We can if we make cellulistic ethanol out right, right,
it's just garbage before, But then you know, once we're
(09:17):
using it, like I said, it becomes biomassive feed stack.
Here's the problem. You were saying earlier that it's it's
a very expensive process. It's I said, it's not very efficient.
These are all extremely accurate. And the reason why is
um Like those microbes I mentioned that are changing the
cellulose into sugars to be fermented, those die after a
(09:39):
very short period of time and they have to be replaced.
So that's an added cost right indeed, Okay, Indeed, microbe
replacement is actually that's a very expensive process. Microbe replacement.
It's a killer and it kills you every time. And
plus also remember I mentioned that the two end products
are water and um ethanol. They mix together really easily,
(10:00):
which is good. No, it's not, no, no, because then
you have to extract the ethanol from the water, which
is costly and time consuming, and it's an added step.
Right yeah, what they're trying to do with some of
these processes is limit these steps, which makes it obviously cheaper.
Plus also, even once you do extract the ethanol from
the water and you are transporting ethanol, uh say, to
(10:21):
your local gas stations via pipeline the way we do
it with oil now we try we shoot it through pipes.
Refined gas, we shoot it through pipes and it's separated
by columns of water. Will be like gas water, gas water,
gas water. You can't do that with ethanol. We have
to come with a completely new technology for it because
it'll just mix with the water and the stuff that
(10:42):
comes out the end would have to be extracted again,
right right, So there's a bunch of challenges to cellulistic ethanol. Really,
what it comes down to is it's just too expensive
to replace oil right now. Okay, so again, what's the solution? Well,
which one? Let's let's start rapping. What do you want
to talk about? Camelina or camelina is like the the
(11:04):
wonder plant, right, Well, perhaps camelina is Uh, if you
want camelina should go to Montana first, or Idaho was
at the other Origi grower, but yeah, Montana seemed to
kind of stand out above the rest is like the
big potential producer for camelina, right right. One of the
cool things about camelina is gonna be grown in a
(11:24):
rotation with wheat crops. Yeah, we grow a lot of
wheat right Actually, um, it's been shown and it's fallow.
You use it on the fallow land, right and right now,
they just let weeds grow in a huge tract of
wheat crop land. But if they were placed with camelina, actually,
when they plant wheat the next season, it has about
(11:44):
more increased yield than when they just use weeds this season.
Before you want to talk yields, camelina yields roughly double
what soy yields. And soy you know, is the wonder
plant everyone knows. And the oil that Camelina produced is
more cold resistant than your average biodiesel and resistant drought
(12:06):
resistant since it grows in marginal lands as well, it
requires very little fertilizer or insecticide. So that's huge too. Well,
it sounds like this is the answer. Wait it gets
even better, chuck more. Um, to get the Camelina oil
that's used to produce bio hydrocarbon fuel, right, Um, you
(12:29):
actually have to crush the plant matter and then you
extract the oil. The stuff that's left over actually makes
an excellent livestock feed, so you've got all that extra
income right there. Right. Yeah. Well, they've done some studies
on the emissions from let's say jet fuel made by Camelina.
(12:50):
They call it green jet fuel, and there is an
eighty four point four percent savings compared to regular petroleum
jet fuel in greenhouse gas emissions. Right yeah, that's that's
way huge. Uh. And if you're talking biodiesel and exhibits
savings of over regular das over petroleum based desil and
(13:11):
even more. You said that they were doing tests with it, right,
they're actually conducting real flights with it. So of fifty
percent jet fuel like petroleum based jet fuel and fifty
um biojet fuel green jet fuel. That's awesome, And so
it's actually keeping the plane aloft and I believe more
energy efficient. Yeah, well, nobody wants to use you know,
(13:32):
no matter how environmentally friendly a fuel is, everybody's gonna
hate it if planes crashed and you and when you
fill it up with it. Right, and we're talking about Montana.
The state of Montana alone could support between two and
three million acres of this stuff, producing how many millions
of barrels of oil? Well, two hundred to three hundred
million gallons of oil a year. Here's the rub that
(13:54):
farmers grow education. They don't know a lot about it
at this point. They don't. But even if every farmer
in Montana we're producing the maximum amount of camelina oil
every year, right, three million gallons a year, three or
four I think. See. The problem is is here in
the US we use twenty one million barrels of oil
(14:15):
a day. So even if Montana produced the maximum muld
of camelina oil, we use it up as a nation
in just a few days, tops, you know what I'm saying.
That's a huge problem with that. Plus also camelina goes
through a much similar process or a similar process to
um cellulistic ethanol. They've got these extra expensive steps, right,
(14:39):
So clearly we've got the we have the cleaner burning
fuel part down right, because it's producing simpler biohydrocarbons, so
they're burning more efficiently and they're they're burning up completely,
so there's fewer emissions, except there's carbon dioxide emissions still, right,
(15:00):
and a truly perfect alternative fuel. The two waste products
you're gonna be water and uh, carbon dioxide. The problem
is we're still emitting carbon dioxide, right, Actually hydrogen would
be the way to go, sure, but yeah please yeah,
So that you just scoffed, so like that. It was
(15:20):
a pretty clear scoff, wasn't it. So um, we still
have this this hurdle, and one of them is the
making a fewer step process, which would be inherently less expensive,
right right. Are you talking about the mystery fungus? No, yes, sure,
not a mystery fungus, but super fungus. Well, that's that's different.
I mean, that's like just going to the source to
(15:43):
find uh, you know, I don't know, maybe some sort
of fungus that produces diesel on its own without any steps.
Shall we talk about that? Is there such a thing?
I think? So they have found this in uh, Patagonia,
is that right in the rainforest? And it is called
help me out here, io clad cladium roseum. I think
(16:03):
that's probably pretty close chuck cladium roseum or g roseum. Yeah,
let's just call it that, or g ros or just
drows let's call it g roseum. And they've discovered this
fungus kind of by accident or not kind of accident,
very much by accident, which is the best part. Yeah,
they were running around the Patagonian rainforest exposing tree fungus
(16:24):
to antibiotics to see what happens, right, a bunch of hippies,
And what they found out was this g rose e
um grew in the presence of these gases when everything
else was dying away. So you kind of went, hey,
what a good stuff exactly? And then they looked a
little closer and what, well are you saying? The best
part is that you can grow this in labs. Sure,
(16:44):
that's one part. I think The best part is the
fact that this thing naturally excretes diesel. Well, sure, diesel fuel.
There's a fungus out there that excretes what we would
just call diesel fuel, which is nuts. That's what you're
going the obvious round. I thought, Oh, yes, a talk
about like cutting steps out. I mean, you just exposed this, uh,
(17:04):
this stuff to antibiotics, right, and it starts producing diesel
directly from cellulose, yeah, but from eating on a tree, right,
And like you said, they've already managed to to reproduce
it in the lab right right, and they call it
mica diesel. Yeah, and yeah, they can create this stuff
in the lab. It's crazy, which you know this this
is one of the big exciting things about g. Rose
(17:28):
e um. Well plus also g roseum, as if it
couldn't get any better, produces potent antibiotics as a byproduct
as well and introducing diesel and animbiotics. Well, so why
don't we just go this route? I think we should
bow down to the g. Roseum master, which will clearly
dominate the human race within the next fifty years. And
(17:49):
this is only like six months ago that this they
figured the stuff out. It's a brand new dawning of
a new age. Maybe, well it was twelve months ago
they found out, but it took him six months to
get out of the forest, and they were running the
whole time to tell everybody they were Yeah, they kept
falling down. Yeah. Yeah. So what I want to know, Well,
the good part is that they can actually manufacture it,
because that's what I was worried about. Was cool they
(18:10):
found the saying, but it's in the rainforest. So then
I thought, well, that just means you're gonna start raping
the rainforest. Yeah. I thought the same thing too, And
I have to say I was to see that they
synthesized it already or and that's awesome, figured out how
to manipulate it science exactly precisely. Also, there's a there's
a movement of foot to cut out extra steps in
the ethanol process or you know what converting camelina oil
(18:34):
the usable um diesel fuel. Uh, and that's using different
kinds of catalysts um. There are these guys that M
I T that are using um metals like platinum and copper.
I believe right to to catalyze these things. What what
happens is basically from what I understand, and again this
is m I T. And I definitely did not attend
(18:56):
M I T. A bunch of dummies, Yeah, what are
you talking about? Um? Basically, you take this uh this um,
this cellulistic ethanol, say right, and you run it over
these catalysts that are very high heat, so like you
have ultraheated platinum. And what happens is when it goes over,
it actually converts the chemical composition of the ethanol or
(19:19):
not the ethanol, the the main ingredients used in ethanol,
the cellulose, let's say, um, and it converts it into biohydrocarbons.
Right there. There's no other steps. Actually there are two steps,
but they're actually very quick and um it's thousands of
times faster I understand than microbial fermentation. You can produce
(19:39):
this stuff constantly, and it can be recycled exactly. The
catalyst can be reused because you're not using microbes, you're
using metal, and platinum stands up to heat pretty well, right.
Even better, the stuff that comes out on the other end,
the usable fuel, actually separates from the other biproducts, so
it's just sitting there on top making extraction easy. And
(20:00):
the stuff that remains on bottom is actually highly usable
in the manufacture of plastics too. So it seems to
me like We're getting closer and closer and closer. The
problem is is I think, um, we humans tend to
rest on our laurels. We know how to get oil
out of the ground. I don't. I don't see any
oil missing. What's the big problem? Until it all up,
(20:22):
it's going to take someone of real prominence to come
out and be like you idiots were in big trouble
for anybody to wise up and really start funding this stuff.
But if if some great thinker needs to come along
and demand it, who maybe you? I demand that everyone
start funding this stuff, right, and then say, and you
(20:43):
are as you're being handcuffed. That's fine. Sure, I've been
handcuffed before and I don't doubt it. So that's bio
hydrocarbons that it? Sure? Well, I'm very impressed, dude. You know,
chemistry and maths stuff kind of flies over my head.
I did my best to hang in there. But you
did great, Chuck, You did great. So, Chuck, we don't
have anything to plug. We're done with biohydro carbons. That
(21:07):
can only be one thing, my friend listener many exactly. So, Josh,
I'm just gonna call this Italian listener mail because it
comes from an Italian. Uh might throw in a word
or two in there. He doesn't say anything about the punts.
So this from Stephan in Italy, and this is in
(21:29):
regards to our propaganda podcast which was just recently. Really yeah. Uh.
He wants to point out that, first of all, I'm Italian,
so sorry for the bad English. His the Prime Minister
of Italy, Silvio Silvio Bert Berlusconi. He is apparently quite
the propagandist, is what this Stephan says. And he says
(21:52):
here we can only dream about propaganda being illegal. I
want to argue, I don't want to argue through a
Riduccio at Hitler hum. But the current situation Italy is
worse than Nazi Germany. That's what he says. I didn't
realize the chuck you're gonna give the Italians after its Well,
maybe you don't want the Italians. The night is what
(22:12):
they call him evidently, and he says, yes, the k
and I p HT is what the Italian media calls
the Prime minister. And he owns all private free televisions
and has shares and I think he means TV stations,
and he has shares in the paper viewings. So being
the Prime minister, he can influence the public TV channels.
(22:33):
He illegally became the owner of nearly every publisher or
newspaper in the country, and he sues everyone who allows
himself to criticize him little Italian influence there on the
speak uh, he says, there are plenty of cases of
phone interceptions and or admissions that he influenced people in
some news and or journalists are being ridiculously one sided.
(22:55):
You never hear anything bad about the government or the
Prime minister, and protest stars in opposition are always displayed
as fools. So basically it sounds like Italy is in
some big trouble over there. So he goes on for
a while, but I'll just kind of skip down to
the end. There are two free news sources in some
radio stations that we have called radical radio and the Internet.
(23:16):
But they're working on some laws to ban blogs and
already have some in place to sense or certain sites.
So I just wanted you to know there's probably the
best modern day propagand you will find Stephen in Italy,
and Stephen, they're coming for you as we speak. Yeah, sorry, Stephen,
but I think that Chuck and I both say, hats
off to you for being the voice of Oh, I
(23:37):
don't know reason over there in Italy, Chuck, I feel
like we're complicit and smuggling information out of Italy and
then broadcasting it around the world. I didn't realize it's
like this. I've been to Italyan. I thought it was
a pretty cool place. I didn't get that sense. But
did you also know did you see that one email
from a listener in China who said that our blog
is outlawed there? Yeah, I like being banned. That is
(23:57):
the coolest thing I've ever heard. We're like right there
with the Ali Lama. Sure, yeah, all right, Well if
you want to compare chucking out of the Dali Lama, um,
let us know what's going on in your country, or
just to say hi, You can send an email to
stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com, but don't
get caught. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
(24:22):
is it how stuff works dot com. Want more how
stuff works, check out our blogs on the house stuff
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