[TheAntiDoomer]

Fuel from Coal-Eating Microbes

Finkelstein says that based on initial results, the company's process could extend the lifetime of natural-gas wells. Conventional techniques for extracting natural gas from coal kill the gas-producing organisms found naturally in these coal beds, first, by removing the water that they need, and second, by exposing them to oxygen, which is deadly to them. By carefully maintaining conditions favorable to the microorganisms, the company allows them to continue digesting the coal and producing methane. The company could also employ its techniques to collect useful fuel from coal that's inaccessible to conventional mining, Finkelstein says.

[Tanada]

Considering coal grades from Lignite to sub-bituminous to bituminous to anthracite and the hyydrogen to carbon ratio grades highest to lowest in the same way it would be very helpful to know which grade or grades of coal they are talking about. Germany in the early 20th century used Lignite as the hydrogen source for their ammonia production instead of natural gas, it isn't hard to imagine using bacteria to convert lignite into natural gas instead.

[TheAntiDoomer]

If coal-eating microbes were possible wouldn't regular, old-fashioned evolution have created them? Don't you understand that nature abhors a vacuum? If something is food then some animals somewhere would have evolved to eat it. Coal is indigestible.

Geneticists are not gods. Sorry

Hey Einstein it already does occur in nature w/Natural Gas, no reason it can't work with coal too:

http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/viewArticle.do?id=32366

[dohboi]

JaG, go back into the archives and you'll find that pstarr is one of the most intelligent and articulate posters on this forum. Not that he displays these qualities in every post, mind you.

(By the way, pstarr; thanks for the bj )

[TheAntiDoomer]

Pstar, i'm still waiting for you to concede that Fossil Fuel consumes microbes do occur natrually on earth.

[TheAntiDoomer]

There is nothing insulting about Winston Churchill or Charlton Heston!

[smallpoxgirl]

{ad homs deleted by SPG}

Please play nice everyone.