cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/34272214
A California-based biotechnology startup has officially launched the world’s first commercially available butter made entirely from carbon dioxide, hydrogen, and oxygen, eliminating the need for traditional agriculture or animal farming. Savor, backed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates through his Breakthrough Energy Ventures fund, announced the commercial release of its animal- and plant-free butter after three years of development.
The revolutionary product uses a proprietary thermochemical process that transforms carbon dioxide captured from the air, hydrogen from water, and methane into fat molecules chemically identical to those found in dairy butter. According to the company, the process creates fatty acids by heating these gases under controlled temperature and pressure conditions, then combining them with glycerol to form triglycerides.
I can see why some people might conflate Carbon Monomers and Carbon Polymer Chains with plastics, because thats what plastics are after all, but it’s also the basic building block for almost all organic chemistry including proteins, fats (lipids), sugars, alcohols, and sugar alcohols (totally different thing from sugar and alcohol btw). Carbon can even form compounds with Ammonia, such as Carbamides like Urea which can be extracted from Uric Acid using Sodium and then used as agriculture grade fertilizers.
It’s why we’re called Carbon Based Lifeforms.
If you think that’s crazy you should see all the wacky shit that Hydrogen gets up to.