Oil is a big pile of carbon chains, right?
So - suppose the aliens land tomorrow and give us a super-energy technology that over the next couple years complete replaces our dependence on oil to move our cars.
The people in the middle east are struggling to find a market for their primary export.
What would it take to turn all these loose carbon molecules into something golden brown & delicious (or simply life-sustaining & nasty tasting)?
Essentially the same thing was proposed by Jonathan Swift nearly 280 years ago (but with respect to poor children in Ireland, who were burdens on their families).
Jonathan Swift proposed making something edible out of crude oil?
Ah – I misunderstood you! – the “Soylent Green” confused me.
But oil can be used for a lot of purposes other than fueling transportation, including heating, generating electricity, and making industrial chemicals.
Hm, I thought it tasted a little greasy when I had some for breakfast this morning.
Well, you’re correct in that oil is a mix of several hydrocarbons - organic molecules - and that, likewise, the food we eat is also composed of organic molecules. However, aside from their carbon atoms and rough classification there’s very little biochemical similarity on how they act - and react. While the various components of crude are typically mixtures of hydrocarbons which contain only carbon and hydrogen and tend to be fairly toxic, the carbon chains in the food we eat are significantly more complicated. Glucose, the basic “food” molecule, is considerably more complex. Biologically active compounds almost always contain oxygen and nitrogen and their enhanced reactivity lets them do crazy things like build muscle fibers or get you high. These molecules tend to be highly specific in structure and function, whereas adding or subtracting components of simple hydrocarbons changes their properties in predictable and minute ways.
Crude oil indeed is used to prepare compounds for medical use, already, through synthetic organic chemistry. A few small fractions of the oil are used as “feedstock” for pharmaceutical companies - these tend to be simple, small molecules that can be combined in predictable ways. This allows the ‘engineering’ of custom-built molecules. As always there are limitations to synthesis, though. It’s extremely difficult to get pure mixtures of compounds, as they may react to combine into different products - it only takes one misplaced atom to ruin a desired result. Combine to this unconsumed reactants, potentially toxic catalysts and byproducts and you begin to see why drugs cost so much. All that research and development to obtain a useful process is hugely expensive. It’s very difficult to slot an oxygen in at leisure, at a predetermined location. That’s more of a job for enzymes.
So why not, say, make some crude-oil-glucose in a huge vat? It would certainly be possible to do such a thing. Your alien device would virtually eliminate the issues of feedstock and energy costs. Without its use as fuel, demand for crude will probably plummet. Limitless energy removes another barrier - together they remove most of the incentives against impractical or inefficient synthesis. So, in theory, with (very) cheap oil and free energy we could probably device a system of steps to convert crude fractions into food, but it’s likely to take several steps with compounding yield losses, and intense processing after the fact to remove contaminants - which may in itself prove problematic.
Much better just to use our power for grow lamps, and make food the old-fashioned way.
Are you sure it wasn’t the whole roast goose you had on the side?
Single cell protein can be produced from methane gas, which could be cracked from longer molecules. Methane consuming bacteria will fix the carbon into their own biomass. The bacteria make good animal feed, but bad human food – although I heard the Soviets tried it, and suddenly had to deal with gout and kidney stones. Cattle can metabolize DNA fully, humans stop at uric acid, which is a solid, where you need it least.
Sad thing is, the methane in oil wells is flamed off at the refinery world wide. The engineering costs of collecting, piping, purifying, storing and using methane just makes trying a waste of money. Even the wealthiest Arab nations, who could tend to just let everyone tax-free, and subsidize gasoline for citizens, don’t give everyone free cooking gas, or use it industry, or single cell protein – it’s just not cost effective.
I seenm to recall reading about a process developed in Russia to make ethanol out of natural gas, but I have been unable to locate a cite for that.
A lot of Vinegar is made from Oil products. Well there is some “organic vinegar” being sold - but not much.
Ethanol can be made from a variety of fossil fuels including Natural Gas. Many fortified spirts contain ethanol made from you guessed it.
The chinese tried to mix some oil based products to dog food …
Does fertilizer count ? Almost all fertilizer is made from Natural Gas/ Coal / Oil