A company in Batavia, Illinois is making butter in a way you've never seen before. No animals, no plants, no oils; this butter is made from carbon.

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.

  • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.todayEnglish
    4·
    21 hours ago

    I’m not a scientist, but isn’t EVERYTHING made of carbon?

    Source: Joni Mitchell, Woodstock -

    We are stardust, we are golden We are billion-year-old carbon

    • Gsus4@feddit.nlOPEnglish
      1·
      16 hours ago

      “Made of” can mean “composed of” or “constructed from”. This is the latter:

      Savor says they take carbon dioxide from the air and hydrogen from water, heat them up, oxidize them and get a final result that looks like candle wax but is in fact fat molecules like those in beef, cheese or vegetable oils.

      The entire process releases zero greenhouse gases, uses no farmland to feed cows, and despite its industrial appearance, has a significantly smaller footprint.

      “In addition to the carbon footprint being much lower for a process like this, right, the land footprint is, like, a thousand times lower than what you need in traditional agriculture,”

      Good example of how choice of words can mislead, particularly when intentional.