Biofuel Can be Made from Beer

If you want to lose weight, maybe you should drink less beer. It turns out that beer may make a great new biofuel for cars (and this may be a better use for it!) So don’t drink and drive–drive on drink (and lose some of that beer gut). Biologists don’t even need beer to do it–they plan to use brewery WASTE.

Working with engineers at Anheuser-Busch, they took samples of bioreactor sludge from several breweries over the course of a year and analyzed the gene sequences of the microbes in it. One of the microbial populations in the sludge produces methane gas which Anheuser-Busch already uses to power its plants, saving the company millions of dollars every year.

But we don’t want more methane–in fact, we want a lot LESS of it–so engineers are looking for ways to prevent methane production by the microbes, and instead, shape the bacterial communities to produce carboxylates, which are a precursor to the alkanes found in fuels. Researcher Largus T. Angenent says, "We are going to shape these communities so they start making what we want." 

As scientists desperately search for an alternative to Middle Eastern oil, a long lost energy hope has resurfaced: Cold Fusion, and many of the scientists who once said cold fusion was impossible are now saying it works. Researchers Sergio Focardi and Andrea Rossi are demonstrating a device that turns 400 watts of heat power into 12,400 watts. 22 years ago, chemista Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann made similar claims, but other scientists were unable to repeat their results, causing them to be banished from the scientific community.

In TechNewsWorld, Mike Martin quotes science writer Steven Krivit as saying, "Very few researchers in this field have ever claimed the ability, let alone tried, to demonstrate an effect like this on demand. Given that, there is probably something very real about the Rossi claim, and there are probably some aspects that don’t hold up."

If YOU’VE been drinking (and eating) too much and have gained too much weight, it’s time to do something about it, and the way to start is with Anne Strieber’s popular diet book "What I Learned From the Fat Years," which is now available as a computer download!