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Interesting technology. There's no reason why it shouldn't work, and if it does, it'll be great. But the numbers in the article don't quite seem to work out. T
by hugh 19y ago
Interesting technology. There's no reason why it shouldn't work, and if it does, it'll be great.
But the numbers in the article don't quite seem to work out. The first "commercial-scale" plant in 2011 will only make 100,000 gallons a year. Assuming they make it for $1 a gallon in raw materials and sell it for $3 a gallon, you've still got a chemical plant whose gross profit is barely enough to employ two people. Is that really "commercial scale"?
- rms 19y agoYeah... I saw that too. Sounds more like a test scale production, or someone forgot two zeros. Wired seems to be slipping lately; there was an article they published that said you can get a whole human genome sequenced today for $10,000 which is very wrong. And if it's not wrong, I want to know where. http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/01/synthetic_genome?currentPage=2 http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/01/synthe...
- hugh 19y agoOK, I googled "coskata 2011", and all other sources say they're planning to make 50-100 _million_ gallons a year by 2011, which makes much more sense. For what it's worth, the total US consumption of gasoline is about 140 billion gallons a year.
- Tichy 19y agoSo it makes sense that they'll singlehandedly take over 70% of the gasoline consumption of the US within 3 years? Without applying any mathematical tricks or bayesian reasoning or whatever, I'd say off the top of my head that that is very unlikely.