FUELS OF FUTURE-THE MICROBIAL ROUTE

Fast depletion of fossil fuel sources has created a sense of panic among wealthy countries as well as newly emerging economies and this realization has spurred enormous research and development activities to find out suitable alternatives at comparable cost. While non-conventional energy sources like solar, wind, waves, geothermal etc are available in plenty, their commercial exploitation is fraught with enormous challenges to the energy scientists. So far solar energy seems to have an edge and many countries are investing heavily in solar energy projects to generate power. With cutting edge technologies emerging from countries like China, the generation cost and investments are coming down very significantly offering some hope for future. What is not attempted in a big way is the potential capacity of microorganisms to produce energy from cheap sources at economically attractive costs. The horizontal solar panels call for wide areas for their installation and there is some element of unpredictability of availability of sunshine uniformly. Vertical reactors that can grow microorganisms to produce fuels through fermentation route, if successful, can be an attractive alternative. Here is a critique on this important area of futuristic energy front which offers some hope.     

"In a bid to find a substitute to fossil fuels as raw material for the chemical industry, scientists have engineered bacteria, which could help grow chemical precursors for fuels and plastics. "Most chemical feed stocks come from petroleum and natural gas, and we need other sources," assistant professor of chemistry at University of California, Davis and lead author on the study Shota Atsumi said. Biological reactions are good at forming carbon-carbon bonds, using carbon dioxide as a raw material for reactions powered by sunlight, called photosynthesis, and cyanobacteria, also known as "blue-green algae," have been doing it for more than 3 billion years, the Science Daily reported. The challenge is to get the cyanobacteria to make significant amounts of chemicals that can be readily converted to chemical feed stocks. With support from Japanese chemical manufacturer Asahi Kasei Corp., Atsumi's lab at UC Davis has been working on introducing new chemical pathways into the cyanobacteria. The researchers, working a step at a time, built up a three-step pathway that allows the cyanobacteria to convert carbon dioxide into 2,3 butanediol, a chemical that can be used to make paint, solvents, plastics, and fuels. "Because enzymes may work differently in different organisms, it is nearly impossible to predict how well the pathway will work before testing it in an experiment," Atsumi said. After three weeks growth, the cyanobacteria yielded 2.4 grams of 2,3 butanediol per liter of growth medium - the highest productivity yet achieved for chemicals grown by cyanobacteria and with potential for commercial development, Atsumi added. Atsumi hopes to tune the system to increase productivity further and experiment with other products, while corporate partners explore scaling up the technology. The US Department of Energy has set a goal of obtaining a quarter of industrial chemicals from biological processes by 2025".

Though the developmental efforts are on a smaller scale, if the scientists and the corporate honchos who are footing the bill for this futuristic research are to be believed, the results are encouraging enough to invest further to commercialize the findings. 2,3 Butanediol is indeed a valuable source of energy with versatile industrial applications and probably microbes may be playing much bigger role in future to augment the industrial chemicals production. Biological processes such as this using CO2 as the feed stock have the added advantage of helping the world to reduce the carbon foot print considered responsible for the global warming phenomenon. It is only recently that the CO2 level crossed the 400 ppm level which is considered a forewarning about impending disasters if world does not pull back from this brink soon!

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com

PLASTIC FROM BACTERIA-TECHNICALLY FEASIBLE?

Fast depleting fossil fuel resources is raising alarms all around with private and public funded research efforts striving to evolve alternate sustainable energy sources. While tapping solar energy, wind energy, wave energy, geothermal energy, etc can help to fill the gap to some extent after the era of easy and cheap fossil fuels, still there is no clear solution to this vexing problem. One of the areas where fossil fuels have contributed enormously is in the manufacture of a variety of plastics for packaging consumer products including food and it is an irrefutable fact that both production and disposal of plastics pose technical, environmental and economic challenges. There are alternate technologies for production of plastics from basic chemicals produced by the plants and some microbiological sources though they have not yet gained universal acceptance. Recent break through in research studies to convert carbon dioxide, the very villain of peace to day in the global warming debate, are considered exciting and here is a critique on this development with some far reaching future potential to clean up the Globe.

Today, the world consumes 120 million tons of the chemical ethylene to make the world's most widely used plastics. Almost all of that ethylene is derived from fossil fuels. Between 1.5 to 3 tons of carbon dioxide is released for every ton of ethylene produced, which is why plastic has such an enormous carbon footprint. Now, researchers have inserted a gene into bacteria that turns it into one of the world's most efficient factories for ethylene by eating carbon dioxide, instead of releasing it into the air. On the opposite end of the plastic production line, a newly discovered fungus in the Amazon eats plastic, finally giving us a way to get rid of the stuff. The new cyanobacterium works in the opposite way of traditional plastic production: Its photosynthetic capabilities means it harnesses today's photons from sunlight (as opposed to old photons stored in the energy of chemical bonds in petroleum) to add carbon from the air to ethylene molecules. This saves six tons of carbon dioxide emissions for every ton of ethylene created: Three tons are absorbed by bacteria and three are avoided from the usual fossil fuels, says the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. "Our peak productivity is higher than a number of other technologies, including ethanol, butanol, and isoprene," said NREL principal investigator, Jianping Yu, in a release from the Lab. "We overcame problems encountered by past researchers. Our process doesn't produce toxins such as cyanide and it is more stable than past efforts. And it isn't going to be a food buffet for other organisms."

The new genetically modified bacteria offers exciting possibilities if harnessed properly. The fact that it can create the basic building blocks of plastics by absorbing atmospheric carbon dioxide has future repercussions for both the packaging industry as well as environmental managers since it will considerably reduce the green house effect due to carbon dioxide while providing an inexhaustible source for making plastics for consumer use. The commercial feasibility part of the research has to be established in no uncertain terms and if technical feasibility is confirmed all countries in this Universe must join hands to evolve this technology further to the point of global use. The technological developments for optimizing the production of ethylene by the bacteria and exploitation of the Amazon fungus must be a common property of the mankind and there should not be any reservation on the part of NREL to share this with the world community at large.

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com