Reply To: The Harmful Economics of Biofuels

[Wesley Bruce]

Tulse wrote:

It should be noted that there is a way to make alcohols and sugars and even protein from the Methane ethane mix. Add Carbon monoxide in the presence of the right catalysts. Its very very energy hungry and the sugars are pretty basic but If we have fusion we can make food in theory. However simply powering a greenhouse or hydroponics unit will work better and produces much more variety.

But this process sounds like it would much faster than growing things, and would be far more tolerant of environmental conditions. It might make sense in very impoverished situations, such as interplanetary spacecraft or lunar colonies, where one could simply “recycle” food.

Actually most of the food systems for the moon and mars is well underway. We even have plants that are optimised for growing in zero g. See apogee and Perigee wheat. http://iss.cet.edu/farming/activity/plandes/research/popupinfo/var/4_4.htm
They grow well on the international space station or a storeroom sized farm. They’re growing peas regularly up there but the crew aren’t allowed to eat the lab specimens.
The seed list for the moon and mars are several years old and constantly up dated. Fish, chooks and goats are also on the list. Or is that on the crew list?
The original research into abiotic production of food comes from a cold war project to see if the survivors of World War 3 could feed themselves in a nuclear powered bunker.
Recently some food technologists from France hosted a meal in a restaurant in Singapore that was fully abiotic. Made in the lab from all unnatural ingredients. Its not essential; the world isn’t short of food but useful to know that such things are possible. 😉 With abundant cheap energy many things become possible.