his month at the University of Chicago, he announced his bug converts sunlight ten times more efficiently than plants.
“Right now we’re making isopropanol, isobutanol, isopentanol,” he said in a lecture to the Energy Policy Institute at Chicago. “These are all alcohols you can burn directly. And it’s coming from hydrogen from split water, and it’s breathing in CO2. That’s what this bug’s doing.” So over the last 18 months, Nocera worked with biologists from Harvard Medical School to engineer a bacteria called Ralston eutropha to consume hydrogen and CO2 and convert them into adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the energy molecule used by natural organisms. Building on discoveries made earlier by Anthony Sinskey, a professor of microbiology at MIT, they inserted more genes to convert the ATP into alcohol and cause the bacteria to excrete it. “The proofs just came in yesterday. So you guys are getting it hot off the press,” he said on May 18. “And it’s going to be embargoed in Science, and two weeks from now you’re going to hear a lot.” 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.
This shit is super exciting if it ever became commercially viable.
Just like solar panels but instead of electricity, it would produce storable fuels.
Dominic Phillips
There's other approaches too, like e-diesel and the US Navy's work on synthetic gasoline.
Gavin Morales
what do they do with the alcohol when they're done? burn it and put CO2 right back where they got it
why can't they make a bacteria that makes solid bricks of carbon?
Jace Perry
this shit is always scams from departments begging for more money
Ian Turner
It's still CO2-neutral gasoline, assuming CO2 neutral sources of energy to grow the bacteria, which would be amazing.
William Ramirez
>Hurr I don't care about the energy, just fix the carbon Well don't burn it then, fuck.
Or crack and pyrolyze it if you want a chunk of carbon so goddamn bad.
Daniel Myers
Sure, but consider the alternative: you use energy (and generate CO2) to get oil out of the ground which needs to be refined (and generate CO2) before it's ultimately burned for fuel, which releases CO2.
Here, at the very least, you can make something that's more or less redox neutral. The problem will be scaling the process.
Noah Nguyen
And what do they do with a brick of carbon? Burn it, and CO2 goes right back.
It's not about removing CO2 completely, but recycling it
Gavin Miller
>The problem will be scaling the process. Also the cheap, CO2 neutral energy source to manufacture, power, maintain, etc.
Cooper Cruz
Don't worry jews make sure it will not spread. So they can keep sell you expensive oil
Jackson Hall
>jews >oil
Eli Bailey
It's not really CO2 neutral, since it requires fucking hydrogen.
Justin Jackson
I know that most H2 is currently obtained as a byproduct of fossil fuels. However, H2 can be obtained in a CO2 neutral way via electrolysis.
Jeremiah Peterson
>However, H2 can be obtained in a CO2 neutral way via electrolysis. Electrolysis requires shitloads of electrical power. Most places are a very long way away from carbon-neutral electricity.
Caleb Lewis
Indeed. Which is why the hydrogen economy was always just a diversion. We need clean CO2 neutral electricity first.
Christopher Jones
Is this a meme discovery?
Henry Ward
or better we could become space faring and liberate ourselves from these backwards terrestrial problems.
William Edwards
yes
Nathan Campbell
>Which is why the hydrogen economy was always just a diversion. Not really. The efficiency of Oil -> petrol -> ICE -> Work is godawful. If you're in a situation where battery electric vehicles don't work (no charging, long trips, etc), it makes sense to use a fuel that can be produced from electricity. The issues with the hydrogen economy are transport and handling issues.
>We need clean CO2 neutral electricity first. We need CO2 neutral electricity, but it doesn't have to come first; we shouldn't try to solve our problems one at a time.
Kevin King
>We need CO2 neutral electricity, but it doesn't have to come first; we shouldn't try to solve our problems one at a time. True.
Xavier Jenkins
>implying any space exploration won't just be temporary colonies until they can get back to Eartj
Landon Jones
Could you elaborate?
Christian Lopez
not if we master artificial environments. fuck coming back to this dirt ball.
Dominic Edwards
literally nobel prize incoming
Andrew Barnes
It's fine. You'll probably live long to see your silly notion refuted.
Jackson Phillips
this might mitigate the co2 problem slightly but it's not gonna change the o2 depletion dilemma. we all die in 2500 mark my words
Isaac Moore
plant more weed
Jonathan Price
nonsense, there is no reason to believe we cannot bottle environmental processes that exist on earth. see: esa's melissa project.
Julian Rodriguez
...
Benjamin Powell
Paper isn't out yet. It's not commercially viable yet though. It has interesting science to it though.
This seems like it has more potential for carbon sequestration than for energy storage. Not sure how cheap it would have to be compared to batteries to ever be used at such a lower efficiency.
Liam Rivera
Trees are basically solid bricks of carbon...
Daniel Perez
It's more like 50%~
Also the trees don't really sequester it that effectively. If humanity had access to a lot of energy, through fusion/major advances in solar, we could sequester a lot of carbon and get Earth back to a more stable environment.
It's why global warming fears are stupid. Progress is more important than caution when it comes to energy. Keeping the economy going and growing helps fund the switch to cleaner sources.
Eli Parker
your mom is a solid brick of carbon
Brandon Cooper
Actually, she's mostly CO2 by now...
RIP mom
Dominic Robinson
posting popsci should be a bannable offense desu
Colton Lopez
How is it popsci?
It's being published in science this week
Justin Nelson
I bet you're a newfag who doesn't know what popsci is, based on your post, and you are just trying to fit in.
Oliver Perez
rip in pieces
Adrian Hernandez
Atheism is pseudoscience nigga
Daniel Robinson
It's totally dumbed down, which is expected since most people don't know shit about how algae use sunlight and CO2 for energy. But they leave out a lot of important details, like how you often have to put more energy in to these things than you get out.
Carter Moore
AFAIK, the limestome / lime method with high water pressure injection into basalt has more promise.