Butter made from carbon dioxide instead of animal fat

[robertmckenna]

@pesco

Bill Gates is an investor and he was impressed. “I couldn’t believe I wasn’t eating real butter,” he recently wrote. (That almost sounds like a great product name! Oh wait….)

The legendary I can’t believe it’s not I can’t believe it’s not butter ?

I shouldn’t mock. I’m very fond of butter and it’s just not good for the environment at all.

[Mindysan33]

@robertmckenna

I can’t believe it’s not I can’t believe it’s not butter ?

[Loren_Pechtel]

@theophrastus

This old biochemist shall remain gently skeptical on this one. Butter, like all dairy products, are immensely complicated mixtures of molecules (fats, proteins, …). Butterfat is a common (~80%), but far from only, ingredient. And butterfat itself is multiple molecules. Starting from CO2 (plus “some hydrogen and additional oxygen”) is going to be a real task to make something that is remotely as nutritious or tasty as your stick of butter.

My first thought on seeing this article.

Are they simply after something that eats like butter, or do they intend to make something that actually contains the required fatty acids? The stuff that is currently made to be absolutely as digestible and non-allergenic as possible still just uses vegetable oil.

[Metostopholes]

What did the Dalai Lama say when he saw an image of Jesus in his tub of margarine?

“I can’t believe it’s not Buddha!”

[Purplecat]

@robertmckenna

The legendary I can’t believe it’s not I can’t believe it’s not butter ?

Alice Just Can't Believe It's Not Butter | The Vicar of Dibley

[smulder]

@SirValence

My dad was a chemical engineer and as a little kid I got to see a lot of his extensive factory.

… is that you in the middle then

[noah]

This is kind of a cute little use case, but the idea of converting CO2 to useful products is very of the now in sustainability circles. Imagine if, for instance, we could produce plastics from waste gas rather than petroleum. You sequester the carbon from the waste and eliminate the need to extract some petroleum. If the process can be fueled by sustainable energy sources, it can in principle be made not just carbon neutral, but carbon negative.

[gatto]

@jaded

Finally, it would be less than 1% of your caloric intake, so it wont make nearly as much of a difference as your choosing a vegetarian diet vs an omnivore’s diet.

i think it would be if – like they hope – they are able to create an alternative to palm and coconut oil.

palm oil is in everything – and harvesting practices are incredibly bad for the environment ( and for orangutans. ) coconut might be a close second.

The everyday ingredient that harms the climate

[Otherbrother]

@gatto

@jaded

Finally, it would be less than 1% of your caloric intake, so it wont make nearly as much of a difference as your choosing a vegetarian diet vs an omnivore’s diet.

i think it would be if – like they hope – they are able to create an alternative to palm and coconut oil.

Or to make synthetic, sustainable aviation fuels. (Transcontinental jets aren’t going to make a switch to batteries anytime soon, and they’re much less sensitive than humans are when it comes to flavor.)

The science has already been worked out for this stuff, it’s really a breakthrough in making it cost-competitive that we need. (Or the willpower to just add huge taxes and fees to fossil fuels to make the sustainable alternatives cheaper in comparison.)

Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF): AIRMADE™ by Air Company

[Mister44]

Hrm, I thought all of the “pulling CO2 out of the air” ideas were incredibly expensive and energy intensive. Perhaps it will be part of the solution to reducing carbon emissions, but I don’t think turning it in to “butter” is going to fix things.

[kmoser]

@jaded

Next you have to look at the process. This will be created from carbon dioxide which could be extracted from the atmosphere (healthy), or pumped from a CO2 truck from an oil refinery (unhealthy.)

But CO2 is CO2, isn’t it? Unless you’re implying the one derived from an oil refinery has more impurities.

Finally, it would be less than 1% of your caloric intake, so it wont make nearly as much of a difference as your choosing a vegetarian diet vs an omnivore’s diet.

Only 1%? You underestimate the ability for Americans to consume artificial fats, especially when told (whether true or not) that they’re healthier than the alternative.

[Artor]

This is something I’ve been wondering about for a while now. We have all this extra carbon in the atmosphere, but there has to be some economically viable way to capture it and synthesize organic compounds for foods and fuels.

[Artor]

If this is something that could replace canola oil in processed foods, it could be a vastly larger percentage of American diets than 1%.

[Otherbrother]

@Artor

We have all this extra carbon in the atmosphere, but there has to be some economically viable way to capture it and synthesize organic compounds for foods

Well that kinda describes farming…

There are some options out there for making better use of bio waste products from agriculture, turning them into fuels and whatnot. But for human consumption it’s really hard to come up with something more efficient than plants.

[sqlrob]

@kmoser

But CO2 is CO2, isn’t it? Unless you’re implying the one derived from an oil refinery has more impurities.

I didn’t read it as there was a difference to the end product, but a difference to the system. If it’s from petroleum, you’re still adding CO₂ to the atmosphere.

@Artor

but there has to be some economically viable way to capture it

Why? There’s no law of “has to” for the intersection of industrial processes and economics. I have no doubt it’s physically possible, but economically feasible is not something you can count on.

[Artor]

What did Fabio say when a goose hit him in the face on a rollercoaster?
“Aaugh!!!”

[jaded]

CO2 that is captured as a byproduct of oil refining is still CO2 that could have remained safely underground. If the “goodness” is derived by not increasing the amount of CO2 in the environment, it would be “better” to recover it from the atmosphere.

We don’t need extra reasons to pump up oil. Even if this is a way to sequester some of their waste, it still supports their climate-destroying business.

[nosaj]

@CLamb

Does this require less energy than making butter the common way?

If I’m reading the article correctly, it depends where you get your carbon from.

If it’s from fossil fuels or “garbage gas” (methane produced by anaerobic digestion of municipal waste), it takes less energy. Methane (from garbage gas and agriculture) is a significant greenhouse gas, so this is interesting. However, the cheapest carbon sources along this path are still fossil fuels, so something other than market forces would be needed to make this a viable path for methane capture.

If it’s from the atmosphere (CO2), it takes a lot more energy. I haven’t read far enough or deep enough, but I suspected as much because a) atmospheric CO2 is hard to separate from air, so lots of energy gets used in the separation process, and b) CO2 is a really low “free energy” molecule, meaning it has very little chemical “potential” to react. “Undoing” combustion takes a hell of a lot of energy.

So this isn’t a sustainable carbon-capture path, but it might be a sustainable way of abating garbage gas or wastewater gas. I believe the old saying about watching how sausages are made applies here.

[nosaj]

@Artor

We have all this extra carbon in the atmosphere, but there has to be some economically viable way to capture it and synthesize organic compounds for foods and fuels.

It’s surprising how little CO2 there is in a bucket of air. The concentration is very low.

Pre-industrial levels of CO2 were between 200 and 250 ppm [1]. Today we’re around 400 ppm.

That low concentration means there’s a lot of energy needed to separate CO2 from air. Needles in haystacks, and all that.

To put it in perspective: I used to work for an industrial gas supply company, and one of the products they sold was CO2. They looked long and hard at capturing CO2 from coal-fired boiler stack exhaust, where the CO2 concentration is around 10%, or 100 000 ppm. There was absolutely no economically viable way to do this. It wasn’t even close. So the idea of extracting it from air is a non-starter with any commercially available tech. And frankly, anyone claiming they’ve found a viable way needs to be treated with extreme suspicion - I suspect we’re looking at fossil-fuel lobby propaganda, sending a message of “hey, it’s ok to keep burning”.

It seems strange that such a small concentration in the atmosphere is such a big deal. It’s because CO2 is a very powerful greenhouse gas, and we’re nearly doubling the concentration.

If it helps, remember that the temperature change is also small, relatively speaking. With no greenhouse gasses, Earth’s temperature would average somewhere around -18 C. We’re moving it a couple degrees. But when average temperatures were 4 C cooler, Boston was under a kilometre of ice.

[1] ppm = parts per million. 1 percent = 10000 ppm. So 400 ppm = 0.04%

[Aaron_Hertzmann]

The Nazis did this with coal: Margarine - Wikipedia

There’s a lot of evidence that all of these industrial-created food additives are very unhealthy:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/06/well/eat/ultraprocessed-foods-harmful-health.html