this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2025
337 points (94.0% liked)

Technology

74003 readers
3986 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
technopagan@lemmy.world
L4s@lemmy.world
L3s@hackingne.ws
L4s@hackingne.ws
337
Butter made from carbon tastes like the real thing, gets backing from Bill Gates (www.cbsnews.com)
submitted 2 days ago by Gsus4@feddit.nl to c/technology@lemmy.world
148 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] hamsterkill@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Some, as prepping the carbon and hydrogen will take energy. But it wouldn't be hard to be way better than the emissions associated with dairy farming for butter. Cost could still be higher, though depending on how much material is needed for the process.

[–] LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I wonder where they source the methane from. Because I pictured a comicbook flip book of a balloon blowing up behind a cow

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 points 20 hours ago

Methane is easy to produce. Basically, anything that rots produces methane.

They didn't go into details, and I never took chemistry, but they may not even need methane. From my very basic understanding of chemical chains, triglycerides are made from carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, and methane is hydrogen and carbon. So you could theoretically convert methane to triglycerides by combining w/ oxygen, but you could also do the same by extracting carbon and oxygen from CO2 and oxygen and hydrogen from water.

Fertilizers are typically generated from natural gas (methane), but green ammonia exists and is produced from air and water and can replace the fossil fuels in fertilizer production. The same could absolutely make sense here.

[–] hamsterkill@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Methane is just the primary compound in natural gas.

[–] LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

I mean they can get it from the ground, but it can also come from things kind of fermenting in cows/our stomachs.