Home | Community | Message Board
You are not signed in.
Sign In New Account
Forum Index Search Posts Trusted Vendors Highlights Galleries FAQ User List Chat Store Random Growery

Sporeworks
This site includes paid links. Please support our sponsors.

Mushrooms, Mycology and Psychedelics > Advanced Mycology
Threaded Mode Threaded  Previous topic Previous  View all topics Index  Next topic Next 

Welcome to the Shroomery Message Board! You are experiencing a small sample of what the site has to offer. Please login or register to post messages and view our exclusive members-only content. You'll gain access to additional forums, file attachments, board customizations, encrypted private messages, and much more!

Shop: Myyco.com Golden Teacher Liquid Culture For Sale   MagicBag.co All-In-One Bags That Don't Suck, Certified Organic All-In-One Grow Bags   Mushroom-Hut Grow Bags, Substrate Mix

Jump to first unread post Pages: 1
Some of these posts are very old and might contain outdated information. You may wish to search for newer posts instead.
Fungi Biomass -> Oil?
    #6805124 -

I'm curious if anyone has done any research on using fungal biomass for fuel. It seems to me that mankind has exploited all of the other eukaryotes in the "burn life for energy" quest except for the fungi (other than those we eat). Why is this? I mean, that is JUST the fungi's game!

This link offers an abstract describing the autoclaving of fungal cells from Mortierella ramanniana var. angulispora, IFO 8187 at 250C resulting in an oil with a viscosity of 100 mPa.s and gross calorific values of 36 kJ/g.
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=4492837

That would put it at, what, 36MJ/kg or 36GJ/metric ton. Google's calculator says this is about 34MBTUs. Some quick searches gave the following numbers for other energy sources:

1 ton coal = 16,200,000 to 26,000,000 Btu
1 ton wood = 9,000,000 to 17,000,000 Btu
1 standard cord of wood = 18,000,000 to 24,000,000 Btu

The other things fungi has going for it is that it eats what we would normally consider waste material, even cellulose!

Here's a news article about cultivation of fungus found in elephant dung as a method of breaking down hay and straw.

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyid=2007-04-18T135228Z_01_KUA849907_RTRUKOC_0_US-BIOFUELS-ELEPHANTS-ODD.xml&src=rss&rpc=22

I would presume we can run an SVO vehicle off this oil and could further esterify it into biodiesel.

So my question is, has anyone here tried thermal depolymerization of leftover fungal biomass? Has anyone intentionally cultivated Mortierella spp.? Does Psilocybe spp. produce similar quantities of oil?

Are the energy inputs to this process more expensive than the outputs?

Would this only be useful for materials we can't easily turn into higher ordered fuel (like sawdust, trees, etc.)?

Seems to me like a fungal route to biomass energy is better than algae that requires light. Is the downside that fungi breath oxygen (i.e. it would increase CO2 emmissions)?

If our current oil reserves come from dead plankton/algae, dinosaurs, etc., wouldn't fungi have decomposed those things? Is it fair to say we are burning up dead plants and animals or would it be more correct to say we are burning up the fungi that ate their carcasses and bacteria that ate the fungi? I have read about a fungal bloom after one of the extinction events, so maybe we are already using fungal oil and don't even realize it.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: Fungi Biomass -> Oil? [Re: synapticaxon]
    #6806247 -

Gah.

Fungi are decomposers. Unless your biomass is photosynthetic you're bootstrapping. It only makes sense for converting less-useful biomass into more-useful biomass, but in that case, why not just cultivate useful biomass (e.g. corn, soy, what have you)?

Getting a car to run off of wood (processed with fungi into oil) is no different, environmentally, from burning wood. Carbon is carbon is carbon. What you're describing is basically just a roundabout sort of refinement, not a truly novel energy source.

Definite waste of time, I say.


--------------------
FGSFDSFGSFDSFGSFDSFGSFDSFGSFDS
FGSFDSFGSFDSFGSFDSFGSFDSFGSFDS
FGSFDSFGSFDSFGSFDSFGSFDSFGSFDS

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: Fungi Biomass -> Oil? [Re: figgusfiddus]
    #6808205 -

Fungi and bacteria are have been used to produce ethanol from biomass. That's as close as you're going to get.

It's interesting stuff. I'm sure they'll continue to perfect the processes.


-FF

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: Fungi Biomass -> Oil? [Re: fastfred]
    #6809379 -

My FOAF has some radioactive jars of rye that power his house.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: Fungi Biomass -> Oil? [Re: Terillius]
    #6810341 -

also mass producing fungi would be unrealistic to try to produce another Major fuel source. good idea tho.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: Fungi Biomass -> Oil? [Re: kyleda1kid]
    #6886324 -

I saw in a video put out by Darryl Hannah and Paul Stamet's had trademarked a myco ethanol fuel called Myconol. Doe's anyone else have any info about this. I haven't seen anything else about it other than from that one source.


--------------------
“I believe that water will one day be employed as fuel, that hydrogen and oxygen which constitute it, used singly or together, will furnish an inexhaustible source of heat and light, of an intensity of which coal is not capable.” – Jules Verne, T

“Ere many generations pass, our machinery will be driven by power obtainable at any point in the universe...it is a mere question of time when men will succeed in attaching their machinery to the very wheel-work of nature."
- Nikola Tesla


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Jump to top Pages: 1

Shop: Myyco.com Golden Teacher Liquid Culture For Sale   MagicBag.co All-In-One Bags That Don't Suck, Certified Organic All-In-One Grow Bags   Mushroom-Hut Grow Bags, Substrate Mix

Mushrooms, Mycology and Psychedelics > Advanced Mycology
Threaded Mode Threaded  Previous topic Previous  View all topics Index  Next topic Next 

Similar ThreadsPosterViewsRepliesLast post
* Storing cultures in mineral oil ?
( 1 2 all )		 ragadinks 4,577 21 10/02/08 04:11 PM
by OZZ
* Do fungi live in the ocean? worowa 7,098 7 11/06/13 03:40 AM
by Mushmitch
* Ethylene Gas and Fungi acacia314 3,302 7 01/02/07 11:52 AM
by shirley knott
* Radioactive fungi in the news. amyloid 2,354 8 08/22/07 12:55 PM
by gmuralid
* A simple explaination of Fungi.... Joshua 1,883 3 02/06/02 12:20 PM
by MAIA
* Fungal decomposition (ps. cyanescens) akb112211 1,163 3 11/23/07 04:52 AM
by akb112211
* Fungal pigments Cerebro 1,185 2 08/21/07 02:09 PM
by mycocurious
* Symbiotic Plant/Fungi grow chamber? (w/rough plans)
( 1 2 all )		 socratesmind 6,229 24 04/11/12 11:39 PM
by Huge_E

Extra information
You cannot start new topics / You cannot reply to topics
HTML is disabled / BBCode is enabled
Moderator: RogerRabbit, cronicr, Stipe-n Cap, Pastywhyte, bodhisatta
2,207 topic views. 0 members, 66 guests and 1 web crawlers are browsing this forum.
[ Show Images Only | Sort by Score | Print Topic ]
Search this thread:

Copyright 1997-2026 Mind Media. Some rights reserved.

Generated in 0.024 seconds spending 0.006 seconds on 14 queries.