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Bill Gates-backed startup makes ‘butter’ out of water and carbon dioxide

A California-based startup called Savor has figured out a unique way to make a butter alternative that doesn’t involve livestock, plants, or even displacing land. Their butter is produced from synthetic fat made using carbon dioxide and hydrogen, and the best part is —- it tastes just like regular butter.

Liz ,

Yo this would be great for some actual proper carbon sequestration. Make some butter from the air and pump it back down into the wells.

isolatedscotch ,

www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJslrTT-Yhc

Liz ,

So I have limitations with videos, but the argument that capturing carbon is costs more energy than it took to put into the air is valid as long as we’re still dumping carbon in the air. But, we have to stop putting carbon in the air and we have to start taking it out again.

isolatedscotch ,

completely agree with you, but until the whole world stops dumping it in the air (classic) carbon capture is worthless. I’m interested if this thing of making butter can be worth it, because you’re not just removing CO2, you are also making something that would have required farming a cow, which is much more resource intensive.

I guess we’ll need some studies done on the topic

echodot ,

It’s like a very limited Star Trek replicator. It can make anything you want as long as it’s butter.

rsuri ,

The problem with making carbon into butter is it will just be released once someone eats it and burns off the calories. BUT, I think you can make soap from just about any oil. So you could turn carbon from the air into fake butter, turn that fake butter into soap, and then store the soap in caves, solving any potential soap shortages for the next several millennia while also solving the climate crisis.

disguy_ovahea OP ,

Butter is already made from carbon. They’re creating the same hydrocarbon chains that are in the fatty acids that butter is comprised of, just without the cow.

Adalast ,

Also, for anyone who thinks that carbon bound up in fatty acid chains in butter is released back into the atmosphere through metabolism, I will direct your attention to the population US Midwest and Great Plains. These people have been proving that you can effectively sequester butter for many decades.

disguy_ovahea OP ,

To be honest, people probably cause more environmental damage from releasing methane after eating butter. Lol

Adalast ,

Luckily methane, while a potent greenhouse gas, breaks down in the atmosphere quickly. It does break down into CO2 and water, so the question quickly becomes: “are the farts of Midwesterners more potent than the amount of CO2 taken out of the atmosphere by making butter?”

My quick guess is luckily, no, they are not. Some amount of the butter will be stored in fatty tissues which will be sequestered 6 feet underground in a cement box eventually. Most will be shat in liquid or semi-solid form into a toilet to be processed by waste management. As long as they are responsible and compost it into nitrate rich fertilizer we should stay very comfortably ahead of the FBI (Fart to Butter Index).

disguy_ovahea OP ,

There’s nothing good about methane release. It’s 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. After ~12 years, it breaks down into CO2 and water, both of which continue to contribute to the problem, since water vapor has no easy way to return to Earth once in the upper atmosphere.

Human farts are not a concern, but cow farts are a huge contributor to climate change.

Adalast ,

I definitely understand that. My commentary is mostly satire based in fact. Hence the FBI at the end.

disguy_ovahea OP ,

I figured, but the first part concerned me. There are a lot of non-scientific comments on this post in a science community. I was being overly analytical. Sorry about that.

Adalast ,

No biggie. Even though it is satire, the analysis is sound. Given the amount of fatty acids that are stored in tissues in the body or expelled as “solid” waste, paired with the offset of dairy cows, so long as the waste is managed properly and not just left to aerobic decomposition, there should be able to be well in excess of 80x the volume if CO2 removed from the atmosphere as there is methane/CO2 released post-consumption. As long as whatever mega food conglomerate who starts making it uses atmospheric CO2 and doesn’t burn limestone to obtain concentrated quantities quickly.

disguy_ovahea OP ,

Absolutely. I’m hoping that by creating more products that capitalize on using carbon will encourage more VC investors in carbon capture projects.

littlebluespark ,
@littlebluespark@lemmy.world avatar

Wait. So a “butter star” is possible?

LemmySoloHer ,
@LemmySoloHer@lemmy.world avatar

Once one is discovered, there will be a NASA mission to bake a gigantic loaf of bread and launch it at the butter star.

littlebluespark ,
@littlebluespark@lemmy.world avatar

And Musky’ll have a tantrum trying to race a croissant at it first.

Swedneck ,
@Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

so what i don’t get is how any margarine could have the same flavour as butter without adding in some sort of protein and presumably a bit of sweetener, considering that butter is fat/milk protein/milk sugar (lactose)…

You can obviously get close enough (i mostly eat margarine), the non-fat content of butter is very small after all, but still surely you have to add those things to get that extra kick of flavour that butter has?

disguy_ovahea OP ,

This isn’t margarine. Margarine is made from hydrogenated vegetable oil. This process allegedly creates the same hydrocarbon chain fatty acids found in butter.

Swedneck ,
@Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

what it’s made from is utterly and completely irrelevant, both margarine and butter are primarily just fat. My point is that i don’t see how you can replicate the precise flavour of butter with only fat.

Xeroxchasechase ,

Margarine is dangarous, it contain high amount of trans fat. Try to avoid it

Swedneck ,
@Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

where on earth did you get that nonsense from? the swedish food safety agency explicitly says that modern margarine contains basically no trans fat at all, and the primary source of trans fat is diary products

Xeroxchasechase ,

Ok ok you don’t need this attitude. I wasn’t aware of the 2018 FDA ban on trans fat.

Swedneck ,
@Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

i mean then maybe you shouldn’t make statements like that? just go look up the contents real quick before you hit post, and if it turns out it’s completely incorrect all you need to do is click cancel and go on with life

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