Generating Alcohol Fuels From Electrical Current and CO2 82
New submitter AcMNPV writes "A news release from UCLA describes a new process for producing biofuels using microorganisms, electrical current and carbon dioxide (abstract). Quoting: 'Liao and his team genetically engineered a lithoautotrophic microorganism known as Ralstonia eutropha H16 to produce isobutanol and 3-methyl-1-butanol in an electro-bioreactor using carbon dioxide as the sole carbon source and electricity as the sole energy input. Photosynthesis is the process of converting light energy to chemical energy and storing it in the bonds of sugar. There are two parts to photosynthesis — a light reaction and a dark reaction. The light reaction converts light energy to chemical energy and must take place in the light. The dark reaction, which converts CO2 to sugar, doesn't directly need light to occur. "We've been able to separate the light reaction from the dark reaction and instead of using biological photosynthesis, we are using solar panels to convert the sunlight to electrical energy, then to a chemical intermediate, and using that to power carbon dioxide fixation to produce the fuel," Liao said.'"
Basically a battery (Score:2, Informative)
That is light, easier to manufacture, easier to transport.
Slime (Score:4, Informative)
There is one issue that all bioreactors have when they attempt to scale; contamination. They generally work well in laboratory setting where conditions are pristine and test cycles are short but when they attempt to scale they find that the biological reactant very quickly becomes contaminated with other algae and the remains of dead algae. It very quickly become unusable slime. This is an issue that needs to be overcome before large scale bioreactors will ever become viable. Research into the next step, which is the specific process to create a desired output, is useless until this fundamental roadblock is dealt with. It is a bit like designing a robot powered by a fusion engine before the fusion engine has been invented.
Re:Basically a battery (Score:5, Informative)
Not really. This is a reverse fuel cell. Liquid fuels have higher energy density than batteries.
ARPA-E has funded a whole bunch of these electrofuels projects.
Here's one at Harvard, using a different species of bacteria: http://arpa-e.energy.gov/ProgramsProjects/Electrofuels/EngineeringaBacterialReverseFuelCell.aspx [energy.gov]
And yet another one at Columbia: http://arpa-e.energy.gov/ProgramsProjects/Electrofuels/BiofuelsfromCO2UsingAmmoniaOxidizingBacteria.aspx [energy.gov]
Re:Now this could be potentially game changing.... (Score:5, Informative)
the link to the abstract is in the summary; here's the link to the full text: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/335/6076/1596.full [sciencemag.org]
my knowledge of organic chemistry is very bad, so I can't go through the details. what I see is "we have a process that takes in energy and can convert atmospheric CO2 into fuel", which basically means that we no longer need oil for burning (I don't know about plastics). this would be very nice because we could in principle reach an equilibrium between burning fuel and eating up CO2.
couple this with the research from a few weeks ago that allowed "heat extraction" with tiny LEDs, and we may just solve the big problem: nuclear fusion/fission to generate electricity which is then used for a carbon neutral industry/transport, and eliminate extra heat by pointing LEDs at the sky; basically we could have a society that uses a lot of energy, but we don't produce any extra heat or CO2 on average.
DARPA interest for forward military bases (Score:5, Informative)
DARPA was funding research into something like this recently. The idea is that for forward military bases, such as in Afghanistan, you can install a small nuclear reactor for electrical power (much like the navy's reactors), but you have a huge logistical issue with supplying adequate fuel for trucks and planes. So the solution is to synthesize the fuel from the excess electricity, greatly reducing the resupply needs of the bases.
Apparently European countries like France that generate a lot of nuclear power are also interested because nuclear reactors don't scale their power generation with dynamic demand, so there is often excess power. If there are enough non-nuclear plants that can be idled when demand drops, that's great, but if not, then being able to produce diesel fuel for free with the excess is a good option.
I wonder if this was funded as part of that DARPA program?
Re:Sure like to see some info about efficiency... (Score:4, Informative)
The process your thinking of to make gasoline from coal is called the Fischer tropsch process and is currently economical however the facilities are not cheap and the end cost is equivalent to fifty dollar a barrel oil. The reason nobody has built them large scale other than south Africa is that once you start producing on a huge scale if it became a threat then the oil companies would probably ramp production crashing the price of oil and putting you out of business.