KAIST announced a novel technology to produce gasoline by a metabolically-engineered microorganism

Metabolic Engineering of Escherichia coli for the Production of Short-chain Alkanes (gasoline) from Renewable Biomass

A major scientific breakthrough in the development of renewable energy sources and other important chemicals

The research team succeeded in producing 580 mg of gasoline per liter of cultured broth by converting in vivo generated fatty acids

For many decades, we have been relying on fossil resources to produce liquid fuels such as gasoline, diesel, and many industrial and consumer chemicals for daily use. However, increasing strains on natural resources as well as environmental issues including global warming have triggered a strong interest in developing sustainable ways to obtain fuels and chemicals.

Gasoline, the petroleum-derived product that is most widely used as a fuel for transportation, is a mixture of hydrocarbons, additives, and blending agents. The hydrocarbons, called alkanes, consist only of carbon and hydrogen atoms. Gasoline has a combination of straight-chain and branched-chain alkanes (hydrocarbons) consisted of 4-12 carbon atoms linked by direct carbon-carbon bonds.

Previously, through metabolic engineering of Escherichia coli (E. coli), there have been a few research results on the production of long-chain alkanes, which consist of 13-17 carbon atoms, suitable for replacing diesel. However, there has been no report on the microbial production of short-chain alkanes, a possible substitute for gasoline.

In the paper (entitled “Microbial Production of Short-chain Alkanes”) published online in Nature on September 29, a Korean research team led by Distinguished Professor Sang Yup Lee of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) reported, for the first time, the development of a novel strategy for microbial gasoline production through metabolic engineering of E. coli.

The research team engineered the fatty acid metabolism to provide the fatty acid derivatives that are shorter than normal intracellular fatty acid metabolites, and introduced a novel synthetic pathway for the biosynthesis of short-chain alkanes. This allowed the development of platform E. coli strain capable of producing gasoline for the first time. Furthermore, this platform strain, if desired, can be modified to produce other products such as short-chain fatty esters and short-chain fatty alcohols.

In this paper, the Korean researchers described detailed strategies for 

1. screening of enzymes associated with the production of fatty acids, 
2. engineering of enzymes and fatty acid biosynthetic pathways to concentrate carbon flux towards the short-chain fatty acid production, and 
3. converting short-chain fatty acids to their corresponding alkanes (gasoline) by introducing a novel synthetic pathway and optimization of culture conditions. Furthermore, the research team showed the possibility of producing fatty esters and alcohols by introducing responsible enzymes into the same platform strain.

Professor Sang Yup Lee said, “It is only the beginning of the work towards sustainable production of gasoline. The titer is rather low due to the low metabolic flux towards the formation of short-chain fatty acids and their derivatives. We are currently working on increasing the titer, yield and productivity of bio-gasoline. Nonetheless, we are pleased to report, for the first time, the production of gasoline through the metabolic engineering of E. coli, which we hope will serve as a basis for the metabolic engineering of microorganisms to produce fuels and chemicals from renewable resources.”

This research was supported by the Advanced Biomass Research and Development Center of Korea through the Global Frontier Research Program of the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (MSIP) through the National Research Foundation (NRF), Republic of Korea. Systems metabolic engineering work was supported by the Technology Development Program to Solve Climate Changes on Systems Metabolic Engineering for Biorefineries by MSIP through NRF.


ORIGINAL: KAIST

Writer Admin.

2013-09-3

A gallery of disruptive technologies

ORIGINAL: McKinsey

The relentless parade of new technologies is unfolding on many fronts. Almost every advance is billed as a breakthrough, and the list of “next big things” grows ever longer. Not every emerging technology will alter the business or social landscape—but some truly do have the potential to disrupt the status quo, alter the way people live and work, and rearrange value pools. It is therefore critical that business and policy leaders understand which technologies will matter to them and prepare accordingly.

Disruptive technologies
MGI's Michael Chui discusses the most economically disruptive technologies that will transform business and life in next decade.

Disruptive technologies: Advances that will transform life, business, and the global economy, a report from the McKinsey Global Institute, cuts through the noise and identifies 12 technologies that could drive truly massive economic transformations and disruptions in the coming years. The report also looks at exactly how these technologies could change our world, as well as their benefits and challenges, and offers guidelines to help leaders from businesses and other institutions respond.

We estimate that, together, applications of the 12 technologies discussed in the report could have a potential economic impact between $14 trillion and $33 trillion a year in 2025. This estimate is neither predictive nor comprehensive. It is based on an in-depth analysis of key potential applications and the value they could create in a number of ways, including the consumer surplus that arises from better products, lower prices, a cleaner environment, and better health.

Some technologies detailed in the report have been gestating for years and thus will be familiar. Others are more surprising. Examples of the 12 disruptive technologies include:

Advanced robotics—that is, increasingly capable robots or robotic tools, with enhanced “senses,” dexterity, and intelligence—can take on tasks once thought too delicate or uneconomical to automate. These technologies can also generate significant societal benefits, including robotic surgical systems that make procedures less invasive, as well as robotic prosthetics and “exoskeletons” that restore functions of amputees and the elderly.


Next-generation genomics marries the science used for imaging nucleotide base pairs (the units that make up DNA) with rapidly advancing computational and analytic capabilities. As our understanding of the genomic makeup of humans increases, so does the ability to manipulate genes and improve health diagnostics and treatments. Next-generation genomics will offer similar advances in our understanding of plants and animals, potentially creating opportunities to improve the performance of agriculture and to create high-value substances—for instance, ethanol and biodiesel—from ordinary organisms, such as E. coli bacteria.

Energy-storage devices or physical systems store energy for later use. These technologies, such as lithium-ion batteries and fuel cells, already power electric and hybrid vehicles, along with billions of portable consumer electronics. Over the coming decade, advancing energy-storage technology could make electric vehicles cost competitive, bring electricity to remote areas of developing countries, and improve the efficiency of the utility grid.

The potential benefits of the technologies discussed in the report are tremendous—but so are the challenges of preparing for their impact. If business and government leaders wait until these technologies are exerting their full influence on the economy, it will be too late to capture the benefits or react to the consequences. While the appropriate responses will vary by stakeholder and technology, we find that certain guiding principles can help businesses and governments as they plan for the effects of disruptive technologies.

Business leaders should keep their organizational strategies updated in the face of continually evolving technologies, ensure that their organizations continue to look ahead, and use technologies to improve internal performance. Disruptive technologies can change the game for businesses, creating entirely new products and services, as well as shifting pools of value between producers or from producers to consumers. Organizations will often need to use business-model innovations to capture some of that value. Leaders need to plan for a range of scenarios, abandoning assumptions about where competition and risk could come from, and not be afraid to look beyond long-established models. Organizations will also need to keep their employees’ skills up-to-date and balance the potential benefits of emerging technologies with the risks they sometimes pose.

Policy makers can use advanced technology to address their own operational challenges (for example, by deploying the Internet of Things to improve infrastructure management). The nature of work will continue to change, and that will require strong education and retraining programs. To address challenges that the new technologies themselves will bring, policy makers can use some of those very technologies—for example, by creating new educational and training systems with the mobile Internet, which can also help address an ever-increasing productivity imperative to deliver public services more efficiently and effectively. To develop a more nuanced and useful view of technology’s impact, governments may also want to consider new metrics that capture more than GDP effects. This approach can help policy makers balance the need to encourage growth with their responsibility to look out for the public welfare as new technologies reshape economies and lives.

About the authors

James Manyika and Richard Dobbs are directors of the McKinsey Global Institute, where Michael Chui is a principal; Jacques Bughin is a director in McKinsey’s Brussels office; Peter Bisson is a director in the Stamford office.

MIT's 2013 Top 10 Breakthrough Technologies - 2: Ultra-Efficient Solar Power

ORIGINAL: Tech Review

By Mike Orcutt

April 23, 2013

Doubling the efficiency of solar devices would completely change the economics of renewable energy. Here is a design that just might make it possible.

Harry Atwater thinks his lab can make an affordable device that produces more than twice the solar power generated by today’s panels. The feat is possible, says the Caltech professor of materials science and applied physics, because of recent advances in the ability to manipulate light at a very small scale.

Solar panels on the market today consist of cells made from a single semiconducting material, usually silicon. Since the material absorbs only a narrow band of the solar spectrum, much of sunlight’s energy is lost as heat: these panels typically convert less than 20 percent of that energy into electricity. But the device that ­Atwater and his colleagues have in mind would have an efficiency of at least 50 percent. It would use a design that efficiently splits sunlight, as a prism does, into six to eight component wavelengths—each one of which produces a different color of light. Each color would then be dispersed to a cell made of a semiconductor that can absorb it.

Atwater’s team is working on three designs. In one (see illustration), for which the group has made a prototype, sunlight is collected by a reflective metal trough and directed at a specific angle into a structure made of a transparent insulating material. Coating the outside of the transparent structure are multiple solar cells, each made from one of six to eight different semiconductors. Once light enters the material, it encounters a series of thin optical filters. Each one allows a single color to pass through to illuminate a cell that can absorb it; the remaining colors are reflected toward other filters designed to let them through.

Another design would employ nanoscale optical filters that could filter light coming from all angles. And a third would use a hologram instead of filters to split the spectrum. While the designs are different, the basic idea is the same: combine conventionally designed cells with optical techniques to efficiently harness sunlight’s broad spectrum and waste much less of its energy.

It’s not yet clear which design will offer the best performance, says Atwater. But the devices envisioned would be less complex than many electronics on the market today, he says, which makes him confident that once a compelling prototype is fabricated and optimized, it could be commercialized in a practical way.

Achieving ultrahigh efficiency in solar designs should be a primary goal of the industry, argues Atwater, since it’s now “the best lever we have” for reducing the cost of solar power. That’s because prices for solar panels have plummeted over the past few years, so continuing to focus on making them less expensive would have little impact on the overall cost of a solar power system; expenses related to things like wiring, land, permitting, and labor now make up the vast majority of that cost. Making modules more efficient would mean that fewer panels would be needed to produce the same amount of power, so the costs of hardware and installation could be greatly reduced. “Within a few years,” Atwater says, “there won’t be any point to working on technology that has efficiency that’s less than 20 percent.”

Las cinco ciudades más ecológicas del mundo

ORIGINAL: KienYKe

Por: KIENYKE

marzo 31, 2013

La página web TreeHugger.com eligió las cinco ciudades más ecológicas del mundo con medios de transporte alternativos, voluntad política de sus gobernantes en recolección de basuras y cambio climático, barrios que funcionan con energía solar y planeación urbana con zonas verdes para sus ciudadanos.

Una ciudad ecológica proporciona la menor huella ecológica posible para sus residentes. Esto quiere decir que es respetuosa con el medio ambiente, en términos de uso de la tierra y reducción de las causas que contribuyen al calentamiento global. Estas son las ciudades más ecológicas del mundo:

Portland, Estados Unidos

Es la ciudad más verde de Estados Unidos, el país que más contamina en el mundo. Portland, en el estado de Oregon, al noroeste del país, con más de medio millón de habitantes es un ejemplo de una política medioambiental responsable. Esta ciudad se destaca por el trasporte sostenible con una línea de tranvías y autobuses que se alimentan con biodiesel, además de varios ciclorrutas y áreas verdes por toda la ciudad que en su mayoría se alimentan de energías renovables.

Friburgo, Alemania

Esta ciudad fue reconstruida después de la segunda guerra mundial, desde que se comenzó el diseño fue pensado con los principios del desarrollo sostenible, hay muchas zonas de la ciudad donde no se permiten los coches y es una de las más limpias del mundo. Los ciudadanos y el gobierno local tienen como objetivo reducir sus emisiones de CO2 aplicando una serie de políticas para obtener energía minimizando el impacto sobre el medio ambiente. El diseño urbanístico con 160 Kms de ciclovías, programas de energía solar, eficiencia energética y de transporte aplicado en Friburgo figuran entre los mejores de Europa. Cuenta, además, con un barrio solar con el concepto “energie-plus”, que quiere decir que produce más energía que la que consume, manteniendo un intercambio con la red eléctrica convencional.

Zermatt, Suiza

A 4 mil metros de altura y rodeado de montañas, la única forma de llegar a la ciudad es en tren, esta ciudad suiza tiene el privilegio de un centro urbano libre de coches. Los únicos vehículos que circulan son eléctricos. Es uno de los lugares turísticos para aficionados de la naturaleza, ideal para la práctica de deportes como el esquí, el senderismo y el montañismo.

Montreal, Canadá

El gobierno de Montreal es uno de los más comprometidos en la lucha contra el cambio climático, lo demuestran sus programas y estilo de vida de sus ciudadanos. El gobierno de Montreal ha creado la Campaña Internacional de Acción Climática (CAQ) para conseguir algunos de los propósitos ecologistas.

Austin, Estados Unidos

Esta ciudad cuenta con más de 200 parques y reservas, y su modelo de reciclaje es admirado en todo el mundo, todos dirigidos por Ecology Action, una organización que trabaja sin fines lucrativos. Festivales verdes y la Fiesta de los alimentos ecológicos se celebran en esta ciudad. Austin es el hogar de Whole Foods, que se ha convertido en un líder en la lucha contra el uso de los combustibles fósiles.

300,000 mirrors: World's largest thermal solar plant (377MW) under construction in the Mojave

ORIGINAL: TreeHugger

Michael Graham Richard

March 27, 2013

credit: Brightsource

The largest concentrating solar power plant (100 MW) in operation is currently in Abu Dhabi, but it won't stay at the top of the list for too long. Brightsource Energy is putting the finishing touches on its massive Ivanpah concentrating solar power (CSP) plant in the Mojave desert, and if all goes well, the switch should be flipped this year.

credit: Brightsource

Ivanpah will have a capacity of 377 megawatts, or about enough energy to power 140,000 houses. It took more than 5 years to plan it, get permits, finance it, and build it. The shot above shows an early phase of construction.

credit: Brightsource

Here are some mirrors being brought to the site to be installed. At Ivanpah alone, over 300,000 software-controlled mirrors will track the sun and reflect the sunlight to boilers that sit atop three 459 foot tall towers. This heat is then turned into steam that goes through turbines to generate electricity.

credit: Brightsource

Brightsource says that the project has created 2,100 jobs for construction workers and support staff and will have generated about $650 million in employee wages and earnings. Of course, most of this is during the construction phase. Once the CSP plant is up and running, it'll only take less than 100 people to maintain it... But the construction workers can then move on to building another one, or maybe a wind farm.

credit: Brightsource

Here's a shot that shows just how many mirrors are used. It's really amazing how big this is, and how much solar energy will be concentrated into that (relatively) small tower at the center.

credit: Brightsource

This aerial shot shows one of the towers well.

credit: Brightsource

The second tower, with some mirrors still left to be installed.

credit: Brightsource

Here we can see how concentrating solar power works. Step #4 is particularly important; it's possible to store heat and generate electricity when the sun isn't shinning. Particularly useful since peak use time extends into the evening.

Ivanpah will not use thermal storage, but future Brightsource projects probably will.

credit: Brightsource

Here you can see where the three towers are in relation to each other.

credit: Brightsource

A different view of the solar power plant.

credit: Brightsource

A closeup of the central tower. Notice how small the cars on the ground seem compared to it. The scale of these things is huge.

credit: Brightsource

This is a computer-generated rendering by Brightsource that shows what the final product will look like when in operation. You wouldn't want to be an ant climbing the side of that central tower...

credit: Brightsource

Here's another rendering.

Source: Brightsource Energy

Biofuels' Environmental Impact May Be Greater Than Previously Thought, Swiss Researchers Say

ORIGINAL: Huffington Post

From Earth Techling's Pete Danko:

09/27/2012

Biofuels were under the microscope all summer in the U.S. due to drought-prompted concerns about the bite they can take out of food supplies. Now they’re under assault by the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (EMPA), who’ve made the blunt assessment that “most biofuels are not green.”

The researchers there say they studied the full life-cycle impact of biofuels – looking at what the fuels consume, what they produce and what they cause, a concept Europeans call “ecobalance” – and found “only a few biofuels (have) an overall better ecobalance than petrol.”

The problems are manifold and not unfamiliar: fertilizers used to grow the crops end up in lakes and rivers; soil acidities rise. “Most biofuels … just deflect the environmental impact: fewer greenhouse gases, thus more growth-related pollution for land used for agriculture,” researcher Rainer Zah says in a statement.

Biogas from “residues and waste materials” fare best in this study, an update and expansion on a 2007 report by EMPA, done in collaboration with Agroscope Reckenholz-Tankion and the Paul Scherrer Institute. Depending on the precise source material, biogas can have about half the impact on the environment that petrol does, the researchers say.

Ethanol-based fuels (corn and sugar cane are the most common inputs) generally have a better ecobalance than do oil-based fuels (think: soybean or palm oil), EMPA says. This is in line with European Commission data that came out earlier this year, which showed palm oil and soybean-derived fuels having a carbon footprint nearly as large as the notorious tar sands oil.

The worst-case biofuel scenario is when rain forests are felled to make way for crops that get channeled to making fuel. Biofuels produced from these lands are the ones that “usually emit more greenhouse gases than fossil fuels,” according to the researchers. This can happen even when the deforested land doesn’t move directly to biofuel crop production; using existing ag land to grow crops for biofuels can lead to other forested areas being cleared to make up for the lost food production. That’s the pernicious indirect land use change phenomenon.

The researchers aren’t without any hope for biofuels, however. They don’t really endorse them, but they do allow that thoughtful management can make a valuable difference. For example, even palm oil cultivation, if done on unused grazing land in Columbia, can increase the carbon content of soil. This points to how highly variable the ecobalance calculation can be, depending on precise locations and practices.

The biofuels industry, as you might imagine, sees things rather differently than EMPA. The key indirect land use change argument is largely dismissed by the industry. For instance, the group Growth Energy, which promotes ethanol, calls it a theory that is “flawed, speculative and withstands no credible scrutiny.” The group notes: ”According to the National Institute of Space Research, deforestation in the Amazon has declined sharply just as American biofuels production doubled. In 2004, 10,588 square miles of the Amazon was deforested and in 2009/10, that number dropped to 2,490.7 square miles. Meanwhile, U.S. ethanol production has gone from approximately 3 billion gallons in 2004 to approximately 13.23 billion gallons in 2010.”

Why the Next UT-A&M Rivalry Could Be Fought in the Lab

ORIGINAL: NPR

BY TERRENCE HENRY

SEPTEMBER 14, 2012 | 1:54 PM

PHOTO BY MOSE BUCHELE

UT Research Engineer Robert Pearsal looks into a vat of algae.

Two teams, racing against the clock. A long-standing rivalry that up til now has been played on the football field. And at the end, the prize: gooey, stinky algae.

While the University of Texas and Texas A&M University football teams no longer play each other after A&M left the Big 12 conference for the SEC (beginning their membership with a loss to Florida last Saturday), there is a new rivalry between the two campuses: who can make algae into a commercially-viable fuel fastest.

The specifics are well over our pay grade, involving words like microfluidic and B. Braunii. But suffice to say that the idea behind all this research is to create a fuel from algae that can be used in combustion engines.

At UT, as we reported in a story in December, the Open Algae team is hard at work trying to commercialize algae biofuels.

And at A&M they’re aiming to do the same.

A new report by Texas A&M Agrilife Today says that a team at the university may be within four years of a commercially-viable, fuel-grade algae oil.

“The team, with a combined expertise from agriculture to engineering, has received a $2 million National Science Foundation grant to help hasten the process,” Agrilife Today writes.

TEXAS AGRILIFE RESEARCH PHOTO BY KATHLEEN PHILLIPS

A team at A&M recently received a $2 million grant to find ways to make algae biofuels commercially viable.

One of the collaborators on the project is Dr. Tim Devarenne, a Texas A&M AgriLife Research biochemist and collaborator on the project. He says that one benefit of algae isn’t just that it’s renewable, but also that it’s much less carbon intensive. “If we harvest algae and process them into fuels, we don’t emit any excess carbon into the atmosphere that is currently being emitted from petroleum fossil fuels,” he tells Agrilife Today.

If all goes well, the A&M team could partner with industry to make algae fuel commercially viable.

“If we can produce an alga that produces high amounts of oil and grows fast,” Devarenne says, “an industry partner could grow large amounts of it, extract the oil, convert that oil into gasoline or diesel fuel and sell it just like at a normal gasoline pump.”

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Algae can be grown using municipal wastewater, Devarenne says, or by using emissions from coal power plants. That means that carbon dioxide used to make algae fuel would come from existing carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere. The UT team has already produced biofuels from a sewage treatment plant outside of Austin.

And a recent study by UT found that it’s possible algae could produce 500 times more energy than it takes to grow. Oil and gas, by comparison, create 30 to 40 times as much energy as it takes to produce (i.e. drill) them, making algae potentially much more efficient to produce.

“Algae take CO2 out of the atmosphere to make the oil and then when we burn the oil as fuel, we just put that CO2 back into the atmosphere,” Devarenne tells Agrilife Today. “That is different from petroleum because the CO2 from petroleum has been stored underground for hundreds of millions of years and then we release that into the atmosphere when we burn fuels created from petroleum.”

You can read more about A&M’s project over at Agrilife Today.

Micro algas: una novedosa solución para fachadas verdes

ORIGINAL: Ecoticias

POR: ECOTICIAS.COM / RED / AGENCIAS, 
18/09/2012

El diseño de esta fachada está pensado para que las algas en la fachada bio-reactiva crezcan más rápido bajo la luz solar directa.

Add caption

Las algas “bio-reactivas” dan sombra y son una fuente de energía verde para aplicar en fachadas. Una casa en proceso de construcción en Alemania está revolucionando el sector de las energías renovables al demostrar que, gracias a un sistema de fachada que utiliza micro algas vivas, es posible dar sombra y generar energía renovable al mismo tiempo.

De esta manera, la primera fachada bio-reactiva del mundo será instalada en la casa “BIQ” para la Exposición Internacional de la Construcción (IBA) que se celebrará en Hamburgo en 2013.

El diseño de esta fachada está pensado para que las algas en la fachada bio-reactiva crezcan más rápido bajo la luz solar directa, proporcionando así más sombra interna en verano. De esta manera, los “bio-reactores” no sólo producen biomasa que posteriormente puede ser cosechada, sino que también capturan la energía solar térmica, dos fuentes de energía capaces de ser utilizadas para alimentar el edificio.

En términos prácticos esto significa que la fotosíntesis ofrece una respuesta dinámica a las necesidades de control solar, mientras que el cultivo de micro algas en las lamas de vidrio proporciona una fuente limpia de energía renovable.

Las persianas para la casa BIQ están siendo fabricadas en Alemania por la firma Colt International en base al concepto de bio-reactor diseñado por la ingeniería Arup en colaboración con el SSC (Strategic Science Consult) de Alemania. Por su parte, el diseño de la casa BIQ fue realizado para la exposición IBA por Splitterwerk Architects en Graz, Austria.

Jan Wurm, líder de investigación de Arup en Europa sostiene que "el uso de procesos bioquímicos para el sombreado constituye una solución realmente innovadora y sostenible, por lo que es muy importante asistir a su aplicación en un escenario real. Además de generar energía renovable y proveer sombra para mantener el interior del edificio refrigerado en los días soleados, nuestro diseño también crea una apariencia interesante que gustará a arquitectos y propietarios. "

"Participar en este proyecto ha sido muy gratificante. Hemos puesto mucho esfuerzo para superar los desafíos técnicos y ahora contamos con una solución competitiva y eficaz que utiliza algas vivas como material inteligente para ofrecer energía renovable. No se puede conseguir algo más verde que eso" - sostiene Simon O'Hea, director de Colt.

Una vez finalizada en marzo de 2013, la casa BIQ permitirá a científicos, ingenieros y constructores evaluar el potencial de este sistema como una alternativa ecológica para proporcionar sombreado solar dinámico a la vez que energía sostenible y renovable.

ECOticias.com

Scientists use microbes to make 'clean' methane

ORIGINAL: Science Daily

ScienceDaily (July 27, 2012) — Microbes that convert electricity into methane gas could become an important source of renewable energy, according to scientists from Stanford and Pennsylvania State universities. 

Researchers at both campuses are raising colonies of microorganisms, called methanogens, which have the remarkable ability to turn electrical energy into pure methane -- the key ingredient in natural gas. The scientists' goal is to create large microbial factories that will transform clean electricity from solar, wind or nuclear power into renewable methane fuel and other valuable chemical compounds for industry.

"Most of today's methane is derived from natural gas, a fossil fuel," said Alfred Spormann, a professor of chemical engineering and of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford. "And many important organic molecules used in industry are made from petroleum. Our microbial approach would eliminate the need for using these fossil resources."

While methane itself is a formidable greenhouse gas, 20 times more potent than CO2, the microbial methane would be safely captured and stored, thus minimizing leakage into the atmosphere, Spormann said.

"The whole microbial process is carbon neutral," he explained. "All of the CO2 released during combustion is derived from the atmosphere, and all of the electrical energy comes from renewables or nuclear power, which are also CO2-free."

Methane-producing microbes, he added, could help solve one of the biggest challenges for large-scale renewable energy: What to do with surplus electricity generated by photovoltaic power stations and wind farms.

"Right now there is no good way to store electricity," Spormann said. "However, we know that some methanogens can produce methane directly from an electrical current. In other words, they metabolize electrical energy into chemical energy in the form of methane, which can be stored. Understanding how this metabolic process works is the focus of our research. If we can engineer methanogens to produce methane at scale, it will be a game changer."

'Green' methane

Burning natural gas accelerates global warming by releasing carbon dioxide that's been trapped underground for millennia. The Stanford and Penn State team is taking a "greener" approach to methane production. Instead of drilling rigs and pumps, the scientists envision large bioreactors filled with methanogens -- single-cell organisms that resemble bacteria but belong to a genetically distinct group of microbes called archaea.

By human standards, a methanogen's lifestyle is extreme. It cannot grow in the presence of oxygen. Instead, it regularly dines on atmospheric carbon dioxide and electrons borrowed from hydrogen gas. The byproduct of this microbial meal is pure methane, which methanogens excrete into the atmosphere.

The researchers plan to use this methane to fuel airplanes, ships and vehicles. In the ideal scenario, cultures of methanogens would be fed a constant supply of electrons generated from emissions-free power sources, such as solar cells, wind turbines and nuclear reactors. The microbes would use these clean electrons to metabolize carbon dioxide into methane, which can then be stockpiled and distributed via existing natural gas facilities and pipelines when needed.

When the microbial methane is burnt as fuel, carbon dioxide would be recycled back into the atmosphere where it originated from -- unlike conventional natural gas combustion, which contributes to global warming.

"Microbial methane is much more ecofriendly than ethanol and other biofuels," Spormann said. "Corn ethanol, for example, requires acres of cropland, as well as fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation and fermentation. Methanogens are much more efficient, because they metabolize methane in just a few quick steps."

Microbial communities

For this new technology to become commercially viable, a number of fundamental challenges must be addressed.

"While conceptually simple, there are significant hurdles to overcome before electricity-to-methane technology can be deployed at a large scale," said Bruce Logan, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Penn State. "That's because the underlying science of how these organisms convert electrons into chemical energy is poorly understood."

In 2009, Logan's lab was the first to demonstrate that a methanogen strain known as Methanobacterium palustre could convert an electrical current directly into methane. For the experiment, Logan and his Penn State colleagues built a reverse battery with positive and negative electrodes placed in a beaker of nutrient-enriched water.

The researchers spread a biofilm mixture of M. palustre and other microbial species onto the cathode. When an electrical current was applied, the M. palustre began churning out methane gas.

"The microbes were about 80 percent efficient in converting electricity to methane," Logan said.

The rate of methane production remained high as long as the mixed microbial community was intact. But when a previously isolated strain of pure M. palustre was placed on the cathode alone, the rate plummeted, suggesting that methanogens separated from other microbial species are less efficient than those living in a natural community.

"Microbial communities are complex," Spormann added. "For example, oxygen-consuming bacteria can help stabilize the community by preventing the build-up of oxygen gas, which methanogens cannot tolerate. Other microbes compete with methanogens for electrons. We want to identify the composition of different communities and see how they evolve together over time."

Microbial zoo

To accomplish that goal, Spormann has been feeding electricity to laboratory cultures consisting of mixed strains of archaea and bacteria. This microbial zoo includes bacterial species that compete with methanogens for carbon dioxide, which the bacteria use to make acetate -- an important ingredient in vinegar, textiles and a variety of industrial chemicals.

"There might be organisms that are perfect for making acetate or methane but haven't been identified yet," Spormann said. "We need to tap into the unknown, novel organisms that are out there."

At Penn State, Logan's lab is designing and testing advanced cathode technologies that will encourage the growth of methanogens and maximize methane production. The Penn State team is also studying new materials for electrodes, including a carbon-mesh fabric that could eliminate the need for platinum and other precious metal catalysts.

"Many of these materials have only been studied in bacterial systems but not in communities with methanogens or other archaea," Logan said. "Our ultimate goal is to create a cost-effective system that reliably and robustly produces methane from clean electrical energy. It's high-risk, high-reward research, but new approaches are needed for energy storage and for making useful organic molecules without fossil fuels."

The Stanford-Penn State research effort is funded by a three-year grant from the Global Climate and Energy Project at Stanford.

David MacKay: A reality check on renewables

ORIGINAL: TEDxWarwick

Why you should listen to him:

David MacKay. Photo: TED

David MacKay is a professor of Natural Philosophy in the Physics department at the University of Cambridge and chief scientific adviser to the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change. He received a degree in Experimental and Theoretical Physics from Trinity College and a PhD. in Computation and Neural Systems as a Fulbright Scholar at Caltech. In 1992, MacKay was made the Royal Society Smithson Research Fellow at Darwin College at University of Cambridge and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in May 2009. He has also taught at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cape Town. In 2003, his book Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms was published and, in 2008, he self-published Sustainable Energy — Without the Hot Air. Both books are fully available for free online.

TEDxWarwick - David MacKay - 
How the Laws of Physics Constrain Our Sustainable Energy Options

Department of Climate Change Chief Scientific Advisor, Professor David MacKay FRS, is responsible for ensuring the best science and engineering advice underpins DECC's policy and decision-making.

In addition to his role at DECC, David is Professor of Natural Philosophy in the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge. He studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge and then obtained his PhD in Computation and Neural Systems at the California Institute of Technology. He returned to Cambridge as a Royal Society research fellow at Darwin College. He is internationally known for his research in machine learning, information theory, and communication systems, including the invention of Dasher -- a software interface that enables efficient communication in any language with any muscle. He has taught Physics in Cambridge since 1995 and he is a Fellow of the Royal Society.

David is the author of the critically acclaimed book, Sustainable Energy — Without the Hot Air, which is intended to help people understand the numbers around sustainable energy. Video

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)

El futuro energético de Chile está en las fuentes renovables y la eficiencia

ORIGINAL: International Rivers

Río Pascua. Foto: Universidad Diego Portales

Reporte completo en Español:
http://www.internationalrivers.org/files/Hall_Roman_ChileRenovables_2011.pdf

El debate sobre una política nacional energética en Chile está comenzando. Un conjunto de proyectos eléctricos han generado múltiple conflictos y un cuestionamiento público  acerca de la necesidad de los mismos y también sobre los procedimientos de aprobación.

La ausencia de una política de estado que permita a la vez diversificar la matriz energética y mejorar la sustentabilidad del desarrollo del sector es claramente un déficit insoslayable y que no puede postergarse más. 

Tal y como han recomendado la Agencia Internacional de Energía, es necesaria una revisión exhaustiva de las políticas energéticas con un compromiso real y efectivo de parte del Estado para transitar hacia una mayor sustentabilidad en el sector y tener una política energética de largo plazo adecuadamente consensuada con todos los grupos de interés. Con objetivos y metas claramente establecidas para facilitar su monitoreo y evaluación. La internalización de los costos sociales y ambientales de la generación de energía es impostergable, así como la necesaria diversificación de la matriz energética. Para que esto ocurra hay que superar las actuales barreras de entrada de nuevos actores, revirtiendo el control monopólico que ejercen un pequeño grupo de empresas. Los cambios que se deben implementar son una demanda creciente  de la sociedad chilena.  Hoy más que nunca se necesita una estrategia nacional con una mirada de largo plazo, que potencie efectivamente el desarrollo de las energías renovables y priorice la eficiencia energética como su pilar principal en el desarrollo de una matriz energética sustentable.

El reciente terremoto en Japón y el terremoto en Chile demostraron que la seguridad energética es esencial para el desarrollo de un país y que más allá de las ofertas de las empresas generadoras y su potencial de inversión es necesario definir políticas de estado que diversifiquen la matríz energética sin sacrificar la seguridad ecológica y las economías locales. También, es claro que a través de todo el mundo se están revisando los paradigmas que definieron los sistemas de suministro eléctrico en el Siglo XX. La transición que se está comenzando a desarrollar implica matrices mucho más diversificadas,  con componentes cada vez mayores  de energías renovables y  un aumento de la cantidad de actores en el sistema de generación.

En este trabajo hemos revisado y actualizado los datos y el análisis presentado en el libro “¿Se Necesitan Represas en la Patagonia?” publicado por Ocho Libros a mediados del 2009. Los datos actualizados nos demuestran que las hipótesis allí planteadas siguen siendo válidas, pero se hace cada vez más urgente el establecimiento de una clara política de Estado en el tema de matriz energética para el Sistema Eléctrico Chileno.