Fossil Free: Microbe Helps Convert Solar Power to Liquid Fuel

ELECTROFUEL: This novel bioreactor uses the electricity from a photovoltaic panel to help a microbe build CO2 into a liquid fuel. Image: Courtesy of Han Li

A new "bioreactor" could store electricity as liquid fuel with the help of a genetically engineered microbe and copious carbon dioxide. The idea?dubbed "electrofuels" by a federal agency funding the research?could offer electricity storage that would have the energy density of fuels such as gasoline. If it works, the hybrid bioelectric system would also offer a more efficient way of turning sunlight to fuel than growing plants and converting them into biofuel.

"The method provides a way to store electrical energy in a form that can be readily used as a transportation fuel," chemical engineer James Liao of the University of California, Los Angeles, explains. Liao and his colleagues report on their "integrated electro-microbial bioreactor" in Science on March 30.

To convert electricity into liquid fuel, Liao and his colleagues focused on Ralstonia eutropha, a soil microbe that can use hydrogen as an energy source to build CO2 into more microbial growth. Already, the microbe's biological machinery is being harnessed for industrial purposes?for example, to churn out plastic instead of proteins. By tweaking the industrial microorganism's genetics, the team now has coaxed it to churn out various butanols?a liquid fuel. "If one speaks with combustion engineers, then they will tell you that the simplest real fuel is butanol," says chemist Andrew Bocarsly of Princeton University, who is not involved in the electrofuel project.

Liao's bioreactor gets its electricity from a solar panel. The current flows into an electrode in the bioreactor, which is full of water, CO2 and R. eutropha. The electricity starts a chemical reaction that uses the CO2 to make formate?carbon dioxide with a hydrogen atom attached, which is an ion (electrically charged) that substitutes for insoluble hydrogen as an energy source for the microbe. The genetically engineered R. eutropha then consumes the formate, yielding butanols, plus more CO2 as a waste product?the latter of which is recycled back through the biochemical process.

R. eutropha doesn't particularly like to be shocked, however, so Liao's team built a "porous ceramic cup" to shield the microbe from the electrical current. Powered by its photovoltaic panel, the bioreactor produced 140 milligrams per liter of butanol fuel over 80 hours, although it then stopped working. "In principle, we can use the same approach to produce other kinds of fuels or chemicals," Liao says.

The approach combines the appeal of energy-dense liquid fuels?packing 50-times or more the energy per kilogram of even the best batteries?with the potential to produce more fuel in a limited area than plants. Photosynthesis achieves the same thing, absorbing sunlight and storing its energy in the bonds of carbohydrate molecules?otherwise known as food and, nowadays, fuel. But photosynthesis is inefficient. For example, corn converted to ethanol captures less than 0.2 percent of the original energy in the sunlight as fuel. A photovoltaic cell can convert 15 percent of incoming photons into electricity, but such solar electricity is hard to store. Using solar power in an electrofuel bioreactor such as Liao's could theoretically convert as much as 9 percent of the incoming sunlight into the final and storable fuel. "By combining a man-made device, which has a great potential for improvement, with biological CO2 fixation, we get the best of both worlds," Liao argues, although that kind of efficiency has yet to be demonstrated. Even this demonstration process turns more sunlight into liquid fuel, however, than biofuels such as corn ethanol or even photosynthetic microbes genetically altered to make butanols. Plus, Liao adds, "it is possible to increase the productivity much higher, since Ralstonia is an industrial microorganism."

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