My family and I went to see the fireflies along the Yak Yak river, near Ijok, Kemaman, Terengganu. We went after dinner at Tong Juan, which is in Chukai, and well known among oilman for its stuffed crabs (though to be honest, they aren’t the only stuffed crab game in town).
Turns out that the firefly attraction is not well developed. You have to arrange for a boatman to meet you at the jetty. The boats are equipped with electric motors, so the tour is nice and silent.
The light produced from the stern of the firefly comes from the oxidation of luciferase with luciferin as a catalyst. The reaction is apparently 90% efficient. It got me thinking, is there a place for bio luminescence in the oil & gas industry? One place it could be useful is in the production of Class I Div 2 (or Div 1) lighting sources. There is little heat generated, and possibly requires some sort of pump to mix the two chemicals together. Concerns entrepreneurs have to think about are:
- light intensity (is the light bright enough to be useful).
- cost (the chemicals have to be made, most likely through bio engineering).
- transportability (two chemicals have to be kept oxygen free till the time of use).
- engineering (circulation systems, delivery of oxygen, control mechanisms).
Anyone have any other ideas?
Wata - Malaysian Oil and Gas Engineer 
I’m working in a small chemical company in Rodian, K. Selangor.
Generally, firefly luceferin (or sometime lucifrin) is one of the subclass of luciferins available. It is divided to marine luceferin (vargula/phyla), plant luceferin (Gonyaulax – which release light when mix with acidic compounds) and bacterial luceferin.
Normally, these compounds are not easily produced, and expensive to say the least. The lucefrase, which is light emitting, may not produced the required wavelength to give sufficent luminosity.
However, there are ways to use synthetic lucefrase. However, the by products are less than desired, with adehyd by products typical of baterial luceferin.
I believe that lucefrase emitted light wavelength is depended on pH, metallic ions (binded/catalytic) and structure, which is correctly pointed out earlier.
One researcher, Sidney M Hecht have been looking at this phenomena, and his research should be accessible via internet. This provides a thought provoking discussion on the feasibility of such idea.
There are more work before this can be industrially used in the oil and gas industry
Conan Antonio Motti
From the safety perspective, what is the order of heat flux via radiation? Is it possible to change the color of the light source by introducing another chemical element? Perhaps it could be used to assist in the invention of the brake light emitter on the dashboard for the proton cars.
Hello Sith Lord,
I would like to comment that based on planck’s theory, and emmisivity factor, the only way we can change the colour is by the surface temperature changes. However, the heat flux is highly dependent on the emissivity factor.
This would be a function of Q proportional to T^4
I think the link has not correctly refer to Sidney.
The ones I am referring to is as follows
http://oscar.virginia.edu/asp/PublicAward.asp?AwardID=15964
Dear All,
Is it possible, via genetic engineering, to transfer the ability of producing light, from the firefly or any other species, to plants/trees, so they could create light with the consumption of oxygen? In the above example it must be possible to gene splice and get luciferase expressed in plants and trees, but is it possible for a plant/tree to produce luceferin? as the firefly?
I imagine a boulevard of CO2 free lightning trees…:-)