Carbon negative Oil 2.0? Nice sounding, but can it be done?

Scientists at a Silicon Valley outfit called LS9 are growing bacteria that digest biological waste products like woodchips and convert it into a direct replacement for crude oil, with some genetic tinkering, of course.

This Times Online article explains:

Inside LS9’s cluttered laboratory – funded by $20 million of start-up capital from investors including Vinod Khosla, the Indian-American entrepreneur who co-founded Sun Micro-systems – Mr Pal explains that LS9’s bugs are single-cell organisms, each a fraction of a billionth the size of an ant. They start out as industrial yeast or nonpathogenic strains of E. coli, but LS9 modifies them by custom-de-signing their DNA. “Five to seven years ago, that process would have taken months and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he says. “Now it can take weeks and cost maybe $20,000.”

And it doesn't seem we'll have to divert our food harvests to get the oil.

The company is not interested in using corn as feedstock, given the much-publicised problems created by using food crops for fuel, such as the tortilla inflation that recently caused food riots in Mexico City. Instead, different types of agricultural waste will be used according to whatever makes sense for the local climate and economy: wheat straw in California, for example, or woodchips in the South.

However, like many early stage companies, the biggest drawback is one of scale, or lack of it.

[via Slashdot]