From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Tue Apr 22 2003 - 08:44:55 MDT
On Tue, 22 Apr 2003 Spudboy100@aol.com wrote:
> For sure! That is why we need a chemist or chemical engineer to validate this
> endeavor. We need an economist to assess the likelihood of profitability.
> Just the facts, ma'am; as Jack Webb often intoned.
It isn't entirely implausable. I'd like to see more about how the
chemistry works. The "offal" it seems should consist of DNA, proteins and
fats. Now the "fats" are easy since they are more or less C-14 to C-20
chains. Though there are some glycerophospholipids at the ends of the
chains that one would need to break up. So I could see a process that
converts them into "oil" (hydrocarbon chains). But the proteins have an
N-H group derived from an amino (NH2) between every amino acid in the
protein chain. Most cell membranes have a significant protein content
40-60%. That is on top of the proteins that are not in the cell
membranes. Resolving this would seem to require breaking the proteins
back into amino acids, stripping off the amino group and then reassembling
carbon chains. DNA is much more difficult.
So either they are losing a lot of the material in the process
or there is some really fancy chemistry going on that isn't
immediately obvious.
But the article does sound detailed enough that it isn't
completely unbelievable.
Robert
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