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Scientist Engineers Bacterium That Inhales CO2, Produces Energy
- dTal 10y agoIt sure sounds promising, but it'd be good to see some more efficiency numbers. All there is in the article is this: "A one-liter reactor full of Nocera’s bacteria can capture 500 liters of atmospheric CO2 per day, he said. For every kilowatt hour of energy they produce, they’ll remove 237 liters of CO2 from the air." By my reckoning that works out to about 80 watts, continuous. Solar irradiance is roughly a kilowatt per square meter, so to get 80 watts at 10% efficiency you need nearly a square meter, which leaves your 1-liter reactor stretched to a millimeter thick. Hard to imagine a 1mm thick mat of bacteria absorbing 10% of the light. The limiting factor really is area, not volume. By that metric, solar panels are still twice as efficient. Still, it would be good to have solar panels that grow themselves!
- pmyjavec 10y agoIt would be nice to put plots of these bacteria on the shady side of roofs. That way you can store some fuel for cold and rainy days / months :)
- smaili 10y agoFWIW, “This isn’t solving your CO2 problem,” he said. ”I’m taking CO2 out of the air, you burn it and you put the CO2 back. So it’s carbon neutral. I’m not going to reverse 400 ppm of CO2. But you’re not going to use any more stuff out of the ground.”
- frederikvs 10y agoExcept that we could a) store the alcohol that's produced, or b) find a way to convert the alcohol or biomass into something else (e.g. plastics).
- maxerickson 10y agoethanol->polyethylene is already commercialized. (A Brazilian chemical company markets it as a green product http://www.braskem.com/site.aspx/Im-greenTM-Polyethylene http://www.braskem.com/site.aspx/Im-greenTM-Polyethylene )
- evunveot 10y agoI think he's selling it short. Imagine if all 1 billion+ cars used this fuel instead of diesel/gasoline. Even if all the carbon ultimately ends up as CO2 again eventually, at any given moment there would be a whole lot of it temporarily sequestered in fuel tanks. The "base load" of atmospheric CO2 would be lower. I don't know enough chemistry or climate science to estimate whether the amount of carbon in ~5 billion gallons of alcohol-based fuel, when removed from the atmosphere, would have a significant effect on climate change. But it sure seems like a lot of carbon.
- ams6110 10y agoGiven that the current level of CO2 in the atmosphere includes the output of over 100 years of industrial world-wide burning of petroleum and coal, then no I don't think the amonut of carbon that could be sequestered in current fuel inventories would make a significant difference. Unless you stockpile decades worth of fuel.
- sdenton4 10y agoYeah, but it's a hundred years of industrial burn which was growing at an (approximately) exponential rate; the most recent burn has a much, much larger impact than the burn in 1916.
- perilunar 10y agoBut the current level is not ALL the output of over 100 years of burning petroleum and coal — a lot of it has been re-absorbed by plants and the sea.
- fabian2k 10y agoThe headline is seriously misleading, the energy comes from sunlight which is used to split water into hydrogen. And the bacteria use the hydrogen as an energy source to create biomass from CO2. That biomass is mostly in burnable fuel. The article is very interesting, but the headline makes it sound like a fundamental misunderstanding of thermodynamics.
- gherkin0 10y ago> The headline is seriously misleading I think it's more a difference between technical vocabulary and colloquial vocabulary. I think a lot of people use the word "energy" to to refer to something more like "fuel." That's how you get terms like "energy production" which include activities like drilling for oil.
- goda90 10y ago"The leaf hasn’t lived up to its promise, Nocera said, because the world isn’t ready for hydrogen fuel." And probably won't be for transportation because battery tech is improving. But if this proves to be an effective way to produce liquid biofuel that can replace gasoline/diesel with simple engine conversions, then we can repurpose our existing liquid fuel infrastructure and existing cars instead of building a whole new hydrogen based system.
- shaqbert 10y agoHydrogen fuel is indeed really difficult to manage. The Hindenburg accident come to mind, or the weight problems of fuel cell cars...
- ams6110 10y agoIt's the smallest molecule there is. It's really difficult to contain. It will leak out of steel containers while embrittling the metal. However it's not necessary to use pure hydrogen as vehicle fuel. Alcohol or other hydrocarbons can be used directly in a fuel cell to produce electric power, or be burned in an more traditional combustion engine.
- shaqbert 10y agoAny mechanism to capture CO2 emissions is a huge win for the environment. What is missing is an assessment of cost. If this is economically feasible at some point in time in the future, then goodbye oil and coal. Open question is how to ensure these bio-engineered organisms don't seep into the environment and trigger some unintended consequences. There needs to be some kill switch in there as well.
- rmchugh 10y agoHe states that the purpose is not carbon capture but energy production, as all carbon consumed will be released upon combustion.
- dhimes 10y agoCarbon neutral combustion is still a win.
- zyngaro 10y agowhich could make it a carbon neutral energy production technology.
- karmajunkie 10y agowouldn't take much to sequester it instead of merely burning it. then the net is carbon negative.
- staticvar 10y agoMy tinfoil hat is buzzing. What happens when this bacteria is released in our lakes and oceans?
- biomcgary 10y agoThey die. The bacteria are dependent on a constant stream of hydrogen gas at higher concentration than typically found on earth. They simply cannot compete with any other organism outside of the reactor for which they are designed.
- Turing_Machine 10y agoThe headline, while accurate, doesn't really describe the breakthrough here. In itself, it's not surprising that sunlight, hydrogen from water and CO2 could be put together to make biomass. That's pretty much what plants (and many natural bacteria) do already. The novel aspect of these bacteria is that they apparently do the job 10x more efficiently than natural organisms.
- amelius 10y ago> The novel aspect of these bacteria is that they apparently do the job 10x more efficiently than natural organisms. This makes me wonder why this solution was not found by evolution directly.
- Terr_ 10y agoProbably because natural organisms have a more-diverse set of needs for long-term survival and propagation. In nature we see a lot of "good enough" because there are other costs and higher-priority bottlenecks.
- Sirenos 10y agoMy understanding of evolution was that it wouldn't necessarily give you the best possible set of "features", only ones that aren't disadvantageous enough to put you out of the race.
- DougWebb 10y agoBecause evolution is random, and not directed. 10x efficiency is what you get when you really have a designer.
- JustUhThought 10y agoYay. Now we don't need plants to reduce the greenhouse gas CO2. We just need to turn loose this bacterium and build an economy around alcohol fuels. No need for systems thinking that involves the environment when we can create a bacterium which is more efficient in one aspect of the environment it is replacing. So long as we can extend this reductionist framework to provide us with the nitrogen we need. And the global temperature management functions. And the human food. And the....etc
- jeffwass 10y agoThe Simpsons is already way ahead, with a similar scenario (lizards getting rid of the menacing pigeon population) : SKINNER Well, I was wrong. The lizards are a godsend. LISA But isn't that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we're overrun by lizards? SKINNER No problem. We simply unleash wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the lizards. LISA But aren't the snakes even worse? SKINNER Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat. LISA But then we're stuck with gorillas! SKINNER No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.
- JustUhThought 10y agoWell, it goes without saying, of course the "Simpsons Already Did It". :)
- SpacemanSpiff 10y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9yruQM1ggc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9yruQM1ggc
- ams6110 10y agoThis won't reduce atmospheric CO2.
- peatmoss 10y agoIt does if you use it to produce more fuel than is consumed.
- abhi3 10y ago>But if hydrogen from the leaf can combine with CO2 to make alcohol fuel, the fuel can be used the way diesel is now. Hmmmm....so bacteria breathes in CO2 to make fuel....so we can burn the fuel and release the CO2 back in the atmosphere? Not to take away anything from this impressive scientific achievement but this application is just depressing.
- smt88 10y agoBetter than digging carbon up and releasing it. This is carbon recycling, basically. Recycling is better than producing/discarding/producing, right?
- ZenoArrow 10y agoThe application you've described isn't depressing. Carbon dioxide is a normal element in our atmosphere. Burning biofuels isn't a problem because the world's ecosystem is used to processing the levels of carbon dioxide that exist in current circulation. The problems that come from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere happen when you alter the levels of carbon dioxide faster than the ecosystem can react. This happens when burning fossil fuels on a large scale because it leads to adding more carbon dioxide into standard circulation. As there isn't a proportional increase in plant life ready to absorb this increase the carbon dioxide can have negative impacts on our environment, such as ocean acidification.
- riprowan 10y agoThe biosystem can handle almost any amount of fuel-burning and release of CO2 from fuels that came from the biosystem. In that regard, burning is like recycling. The problem is that we pump CO2 from outside the biosphere (from deep underground) into the biosphere. This technology could eliminate the need to move CO2 from underground into the biosphere, without having to completely revamp our existing infrastructure. If this is possible, it would be a gigantic win for the environment.
- mac01021 10y agoNot depressing at all. If we can continue to generate energy to meet our current level of demand without introducing more CO2 into the atmosphere than was there before then our climate crisis is solved. Human energy use will have a zero net effect on CO2 levels, meanwhile, the oceans and rocks and the world's flora will gradually bring the concentration back down to a more desirable level.
- xfactor973 10y agoIf you burn the alcohol and bury the biomass then you're carbon negative. This needs to get put into production immediately!
- smt88 10y agoThis announcement is about a year old. I'm not sure why Forbes is covering it like it's news.
- pcl 10y agoWhen Harvard Professor of Energy Daniel G. Nocera announced he was working with bacteria last year, other scientists cautioned it would be difficult to achieve a productive level of efficiency. At the time, Nocera was aiming for 5 percent efficiency—about 5 times better than plants. This month at the University of Chicago, he announced his bug converts sunlight ten times more efficiently than plants. This increase in efficiency is presumably the novel part of Nocera's latest announcement and upcoming paper.
- SCHiM 10y agoDoes this mean our problems with CO2 buildup are partialy solved? Or solved to any large extent?
- gumby 10y agoI can't open the forbes page; how does this compare to Nate Lewis' work at cal tech (which is a mechanical alternative): http://nsl.caltech.edu/research http://nsl.caltech.edu/research
- DateK 10y ago> the leaf can make hydrogen from any water—dirty water, even urine I wonder how they tackle the problem of monoculture. The issue with biofuel from algae is that once the container is contaminated with fungae, it reqires expensive draining and bleaching.
- riprowan 10y agoMy guess is that the chief obstacle will be political: this has the potential to hit the most powerful people in the world directly in the pocketbook He's probably going to India probably because there is more political will there to allow this thing to continue.
- kbutler 10y ago500L CO2 per day, to make 2kwh of electricity (per day) That's approximately as much CO2 as a person breathes out in a day (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide#Human_physiology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide#Human_physiolog... says about 1 kg, which works out to about 560L CO2 http://www.umsl.edu/~biofuels/Energy%20Meter%20labs/How%20much%20volume%20does%20a%20kg%20of%20CO2%20occupy.pdf http://www.umsl.edu/~biofuels/Energy%20Meter%20labs/How%20mu...) So yes, it provides a little bit of power, and no, it isn't likely to scale up to planet-wide CO2 reductions - one per person on the planet just to cover the CO2 we breathe?
- danielharan 10y agoYou're comparing completely different things. It depends first on what is done with the ~1kg of CO2 captured. If humans get their carbon from sources that are removed from the air, we don't have a net addition.
- ommunist 10y agoStrictly speaking, fossil fuels are carbon removed from the air, just a long time ago.
- andrewvijay 10y agoEveryday I think of the suffocating levels of pollution here in India while I commute. This is a fantastic news for us since they are planning to bring it up here first !
- ommunist 10y agoCarbon-neutral bioreactors. Very interesting and extremely useful research. Who shall own that DNA strain and control dissemination of technology?
- tener 10y agoVery cool, except first you need to get the hydrogen. For that I believe he is planning to use the "artificial leaf" he has invented previously. Problem is, while the bacteria can reproduce on their own, the leafs won't. They are made from silicon so probably similar tech to regular solar cells. This can be likely a limiting factor here. Still interesting news.
- johngalt 10y agoMy brilliant invention: A solar powered self replicating machine that eats CO2 and uses it to create building material. With minimal preparation the material could also be burned for energy. I wonder how far I'd get before people realized I was planting trees.
- lugg 10y agoTo be fair, this is 10 times as efficient as plants. Fwiw, it took me to the third sentence.
- thereisnospork 10y agoI wonder how much of the efficiency increase comes from simply bypassing photosynthesis (e.g. what is the thermodynamic efficiency of yeast for glucose -> ethanol)? In any case there are a few important questions re feasibility. Do these bacteria work at atmospheric partial pressures of CO2? Do they perform at the advertised rate at the ~0.0015g/L of hydrogen you'd be lucky to get in solution from his leaf? Nocera is a blow hard, so pending the full paper I expect the answers aren't encouraging.