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75 comments on Abiotic Snake Oil

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joule on November 4, 2005 - 9:56pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I'm not sure I follow your line of reasoning re calcium carbonate and bones.

Anyway, I think the provocative thing about the experiment cited (assuming they did the chemical analyses correctly and really made the stuff they claim to have made) is that it appears possible to produce hydrocarbons from water and inorganic carbon under the conditions of pressure and temperature near the earth's mantle. If correct (and a big IF), then that would support the abiotic theory.

The other thing I find troubling is that petroleum hydrocarbons are in a much more chemically reduced state than the organic matter starting material. How id they get so much more reduced in the largely oxidizing environment of the earth?  

Can anybody out there point me to some sources that postulate a step-by-step chemical pathway by which 'dinosaur juice' gets transformed into more reduced light hydrocarbons?

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TJ on November 5, 2005 - 10:56am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Go look at a biodiesel setup.  Organic fatty acids are converted into C14 hydrocarbons in a two-step process.
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Engineer-Poet on November 5, 2005 - 1:32pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Conventional biodiesel is not hydrocarbons, it is methyl or ethyl esters of fatty acids.
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LJR on November 6, 2005 - 2:01pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Fatty acids ARE hydrocarbons.  Hydrogen and carbon plus a bit extra at the head.
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Engineer-Poet on November 6, 2005 - 11:25pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
By that definition, alcohols are hydrocarbons too.  You should probably consult with the chemists before changing their definitions for them.
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TJ on November 7, 2005 - 8:37am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Hydrocarbons are not just alkanes.  Long chain mono-alcohols do share the properties of long chain alkanes.
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joule on November 5, 2005 - 1:33pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Well, fatty acids are already very much like oils, so when you cook it with an alkali (I think?) not much of a further transformation needs to take place. Ditto for certain animal fats.

However, what I don't understand is how biological organic matter, primarily consisting of proteins and cellulose-based materials get transformed under natural conditions into lower mocelular weight hydrocarbons that have a HIGHER energy potential than the starting material.

Are you (or anyone else out there) aware of a step-by-step mechanism whereby the proteins from say dinosaur flesh or the cellulose from ancient ferns, get converted into things like hexane or octane, both of which have a considerable higher energy potential than either the dead dinosaurs or ferms?  

Nor do I think you can explain this by anaerobic biological fermentation, because unless there is a significant infusion of external energy, the products of fermentation have a lower energy potential than the starting material.

It strikes me from my layman's exposure to the subject that most of the explanations of oil formation deal mainly with the geology of oil deposits and don't give much attention to the actual chemistry of how one substance gets transformed into another. For me, it is not enough to say that the dead biological material got 'cooked' for several millions of years; one needs to explain what is actually happening during that cooking and whether the thermodynamics point in a direction toward rather than away from the relatively low-molecular weight hydrocarbons that characterize crude oil.

 

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Engineer-Poet on November 5, 2005 - 1:47pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Is there something not explained by the observed products of the thermal breakdown of kerogen in rock?
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TJ on November 5, 2005 - 1:52pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
The short answer is that the shorter chain hydrocarbons do not have a higher energy potential than longer chain hydrocarbons like cellulose.  They're just easier to burn since they're liquids.

Dead dinosaur and fern, on the other hand, would burn like coal if the water content is removed.

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Joao Carlos on November 6, 2005 - 8:26am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
So, how coal just developed from ferns and celulose?

Maybe soon we will see an abiotic pseudo-scientific hypothesis about the coal too...

I am sure that the wackos that developed the abiogenic oil "hypothesis" are the same wackos that developed IDCreationism. They are wackos...

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