From the University of Minnesota:
MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (03/23/2011) —University of Minnesota researchers are a key step closer to making renewable petroleum fuels using bacteria, sunlight and carbon dioxide, a goal funded by a $2.2 million United States Department of Energy grant.
Graduate student Janice Frias, who earned her doctorate in January, made the critical step by figuring out how to use a protein to transform fatty acids produced by the bacteria into ketones, which can be cracked to make hydrocarbon fuels. The university is filing patents on the process.
The research is published in the April 1 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry. Frias, whose advisor was Larry Wackett, Distinguished McKnight Professor of Biochemistry, is lead author. Other team members include organic chemist Jack Richman, a researcher in the College of Biological Sciences’ Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Biophysics, and undergraduate Jasmine Erickson, a junior in the College of Biological Sciences. Wackett, who is senior author, is a faculty member in the College of Biological Sciences and the university’s BioTechnology Institute.
“Janice Frias is a very capable and hard-working young scientist,” Wackett says. “She exemplifies the valuable role graduate students play at a public research university.”
Aditya Bhan and Lanny Schmidt, chemical engineering professors in the College of Science and Engineering, are turning the ketones into diesel fuel using catalytic technology they have developed. The ability to produce ketones opens the door to making petroleum-like hydrocarbon fuels using only bacteria, sunlight and carbon dioxide.
“There is enormous interest in using carbon dioxide to make hydrocarbon fuels,” Wackett says. “CO2 is the major greenhouse gas mediating global climate change, so removing it from the atmosphere is good for the environment. It’s also free. And we can use the same infrastructure to process and transport this new hydrocarbon fuel that we use for fossil fuels.”
The research is funded by a $2.2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-energy (ARPA-e) program, created to stimulate American leadership in renewable energy technology.
The U of M proposal was one of only 37 selected from 3,700 and one of only three featured in the New York Times when the grants were announced in October 2009. The University of Minnesota’s Initiative for Renewable Energy and the Environment (IREE) and the College of Biological Sciences also provided funding.
Wackett is principal investigator for the ARPA-e grant. His team of co-investigators includes Jeffrey Gralnick, assistant professor of microbiology and Marc von Keitz, chief technical officer of BioCee, as well as Bhan and Schmidt. They are the only group using a photosynthetic bacterium and a hydrocarbon-producing bacterium together to make hydrocarbons from carbon dioxide.
The U of M team is using Synechococcus, a bacterium that fixes carbon dioxide in sunlight and converts CO2 to sugars. Next, they feed the sugars to Shewanella, a bacterium that produces hydrocarbons. This turns CO2, a greenhouse gas produced by combustion of fossil fuel petroleum, into hydrocarbons.
Hydrocarbons (made from carbon and hydrogen) are the main component of fossil fuels. It took hundreds of millions of years of heat and compression to produce fossil fuels, which experts expect to be largely depleted within 50 years.
###
In press at the Journal of Biological Chemistry
Purification and Characterization of OleA from Xanthomonas campestris and Demonstration of a Non-decarboxylative Claisen Condensation Reaction*
+ Author Affiliations
From the Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Biophysics and BioTechnology Institute, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, Minnesota 55108
- 1↵ To whom correspondence should be addressed: Dept. of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Biophysics, 140 Gortner Laboratory, 1479 Gortner Ave., University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN 55108. Tel.: 612-625-3785; Fax: 612-624-5780; E-mail: wacke003@umn.edu.
Abstract
OleA catalyzes the condensation of fatty acyl groups in the first step of bacterial long-chain olefin biosynthesis, but the mechanism of the condensation reaction is controversial. In this study, OleA from Xanthomonas campestris was expressed in Escherichia coli and purified to homogeneity. The purified protein was shown to be active with fatty acyl-CoA substrates that ranged from C8 to C16 in length. With limiting myristoyl-CoA (C14), 1 mol of the free coenzyme A was released/mol of myristoyl-CoA consumed. Using [14C]myristoyl-CoA, the other products were identified as myristic acid, 2-myristoylmyristic acid, and 14-heptacosanone. 2-Myristoylmyristic acid was indicated to be the physiologically relevant product of OleA in several ways. First, 2-myristoylmyristic acid was the major condensed product in short incubations, but over time, it decreased with the concomitant increase of 14-heptacosanone. Second, synthetic 2-myristoylmyristic acid showed similar decarboxylation kinetics in the absence of OleA. Third, 2-myristoylmyristic acid was shown to be reactive with purified OleC and OleD to generate the olefin 14-heptacosene, a product seen in previous in vivo studies. The decarboxylation product, 14-heptacosanone, did not react with OleC and OleD to produce any demonstrable product. Substantial hydrolysis of fatty acyl-CoA substrates to the corresponding fatty acids was observed, but it is currently unclear if this occurs in vivo. In total, these data are consistent with OleA catalyzing a non-decarboxylative Claisen condensation reaction in the first step of the olefin biosynthetic pathway previously found to be present in at least 70 different bacterial strains.
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Ian McQueen: “I wonder if it would be simpler and more efficient just to use the sunlight directly. ”
Yes and no. Please read Richard Courtney’s post above. It’s an excellent explanation of the ultimate sources of energy and why direct sunlight is essentially useless for the purposes we’re talking about. Direct use means less conversion losses, but it’s still too low density to be meaningful (by many orders of magnitude).
We already have a solar power battery system; they’re called fossil fuels. But it only works on a geologic time scale. And it only works because of the immense plethora of plant life from the Carboniferous Era, a condition which has not existed for hundreds of millions of years. Hence it cannot be meaningfully recharged.
Will it be as cost effective as producing gasoline from oil? That is the only question to be asked of any “new” process, until then, it’s all pie in the sky.
Folks, this is a University Press release, written by PR people — they always ‘sex up’ a finding and are awful at fact checking. Press Release Science nearly always contains pumped up results, statements from the original researchers that have been taken a bit out of context and PR-man induced speculation (often attributed to researchers who later admit that they have no recollection of saying any such thing, at least not the way it is presented in the press release). I have corresponded directly with dozens of scientists questioning statements in press releases from their universities, and they invariably carp about these issues. They also know it is just part of ‘the cost of doing business’ as a university researcher.
That said, using purpose-engineered organisms to produce high-energy-content hydrocarbons is a valuable breakthrough, even if it just eventually replaces the ethanol currently used in highway fuels. As always, the price point, and thus the market, will be the determining factor on whether we see this coming out of the gas pump in the future.
The obvious fact that burning the new fuels will simply put the CO2 back into the atmosphere is overlooked, but at least it is ‘recycled’.
Colin says:
March 31, 2011 at 5:08 am
________________________
I think you are misunderstanding me.
I never said anything about a fully urbanized world. Nor did I mean to imply that biofuels are will be a substitute for energy in general (if that’s what you thought I said). My comments are liquid fuels for automobiles-specific.
What I am saying, is that there is ample evidence that even a crappy biofuel specifically for use in automobiles (bioethanol) can still lead a country (Brazil) to liquid fuel sustainability. That’s now. There are going to be many incremental increases in efficiencies within the biofuel industry and there are going to be some game changers that will remain within the bounds of the rules of physics, just like the early days of biotechnology. It’s already happening actually.
If one were to use bacteria to produce energy sources, then one could possibly take advantage of their taxes (or perhaps build some in) in order to get them to congregate or move to some desirable location after they’ve done their thing. This might reduce the problem of using distributed sources like CO2 and sunlight. Of course, I don’t know offhand about actual distances that would be required to make this useful.
Just a thought. (If nothing else, it does suggest the possibilities that may open up with bioengineering.)
(note: a taxis is an oriented animal movement – the old (old) name was tropism, which is now restricted to plants)
Phil, I know what you are saying, but it still won’t work. Take the entire corn and soy crop of the United States. Convert the whole thing into extractable calories. Now compare that with the calorie content of the US annual gasoline and diesel consumption. You will find that there’s one to two orders of magnitude difference even without all the conversion losses from corn to ethanol or whatever. If a solution is too small by a factor of 100 or so then it’s not a solution, it’s a diversion and thus wasted effort.
philincalifornia:
At March 31, 2011 at 11:36 am you say:
“What I am saying, is that there is ample evidence that even a crappy biofuel specifically for use in automobiles (bioethanol) can still lead a country (Brazil) to liquid fuel sustainability. That’s now. There are going to be many incremental increases in efficiencies within the biofuel industry and there are going to be some game changers that will remain within the bounds of the rules of physics, just like the early days of biotechnology. It’s already happening actually.”
Yes, it is a sad fact that it is “already happening”, and the results are a disaster because it is burning food as fuel. The purpose of the ‘bugs to fuel’ technology is to avoid burning food as fuel.
In August 2006 I published a paper that predicted likely effects of the large adoption of biofuels in the US and EU that was then planned. That paper can be read at:
http://ff.org/centers/csspp/pdf/courtney_082006.pdf
Subsequently, in December 2008, I published an assessment of how those predictions had turned out following the implementation of the US and EU schemes. That assessment can be read at:
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/biofuel_issues.pdf
The synopsis of that 2008 paper says;
“This paper reviews effects of large use of biofuels that I predicted in a paper published in August 2006 prior to the USA legislating to enforce displacement of crude oil products by biofuels. The review indicates that policies (such as that in the EU), subsidies and legislation (such as that in the USA) to promote use of biofuels should be reconsidered. The use of biofuels is causing significant problems but providing no benefits except to farmers. Biofuel usage is a hidden subsidy to farmers, and if this subsidy is the intended purpose of biofuel usage then more direct subsidies would be more efficient. But the problems of biofuel usage are serious. Biofuel usage is
• damaging energy security,
• reducing biodiversity,
• inducing excessively high food prices, and
• inducing excessively high fuel prices, while
• providing negligible reduction to greenhouse gas emissions.
All these effects were predicted in my paper on the use of biofuels that was published in August 2006 and can be seen at
http://ff.org/centers/csspp/pdf/courtney_082006.pdf
My 2006 paper also predicted objections from environmentalists if large use of biofuels were adopted although this then seemed implausible because many environmentalists were campaigning for biofuels to displace fossil fuels. But this prediction has also proved to be correct.”
The reasons for these dire results are
(a) there are only a limited amounts of farmland and solar radiation falling on that land
so
(b) biofuel production competes with food production for these resources
while
(c) additional land (notably pristine forest) is put to biofuel production
and
(d) forests (notably rainforests) are being cropped as biofuel.
Since my 2008 paper, food riots have occurred in several poor countries.
Richard
Sorry Richard and Colin, this is just a difference in the way we think. Thinking top-down would make my head hurt too. We’re not talking about replacing all of the U.S.A.’s gasoline and diesel here, we’re talking about biotechnological innovation from the ground up (just like the biotechnology revolution that was also nay-sayed by top-down thinkers in big pharma, at the time) and the development of more efficient conversions to better biofuels – where the current benchmark (bioethanol), which is acknowledged by all to be a pretty poor product, is just about stand-alone commercial already. There are huge opportunities for start-up companies with better biofuel products, with the added kicker of higher-priced renewable specialty chemicals on the side.
Just eyeballing this figure, I think it’s a good guess that the U.S. bioethanol production is approximately one Libya.
http://graphics.thomsonreuters.com/11/02/LibyaOil_SB.html
As for the food riots in poor countries, the world changes (like the climate). Maybe it’s a good thing that they figure out that THEY need to change their leadership such that THEY have food and energy sustainability without depending on U.S. corn, but I guess that’s a whole different story.
So Colin, you can’t really say it doesn’t work because of the physics because it already is working even with fairly (actually really) pedestrian innovation. Richard says that the physics causes negative societal effects, which I can see. They may not be negative long-term IMHO.
Difficult to say everything in a quick post, but thanks for the thought provoking. It’s nice to have this site. Thanks Anthony.
Dave Springer says:
March 30, 2011 at 7:31 am
“Total global energy consumption is currently around 15 terrawatts.”
That is a power figure, not energy. Still, I grant you that, if we could convert the entire Sahara into oil producing pools, we could theoretically produce more oil than we currently consume. But, have you given any thought to merely the amount of material needed to cover 10 million square kilometers of ground with such pools?
Let’s just consider, as an example, how much aluminum* it would take to cover that area. Suppose the aluminum is 1″ thick. That’s 254 billion cubic meters. At 2.7 metric tons per m^3, that’s 686 billion metric tons. As of 2003, worldwide production of aluminum was 27.7 million metric tons. So, you’ll need 24,765 years to complete this project using ALL of the world’s 2003 level production. And, that’s not including any retaining walls!
*I don’t know what metal they would use. This should serve to illustrate the scale of what we are talking about, though.
Phil, please don’t get me wrong. I’m a big supporter of R&D in biotech. It’s truly one of the great areas of potential innovation. Just not in bulk power supply, either centrally or dispersed.
BTW, the world currently consumes 10^8 bbl/day of oil. At 6 GJ/bbl, that works out to 6e13 kWh/yr. Using your figure of 350 W/m^2/day, that requires an area of 20,000 square km, which is 500 times less than the area of the Sahara. So, the above works out to 24,765/500 = 50 years of total 2003 production. Please note that I have given you every advantage, assuming 100% energy conversion which, of course, is impossible, and your figures for insolation. And, no retaining walls, still. So, we need g.t. 50 years just to reach current production levels.
Did someone say nuclear? Let’s get those Gen IV reactors up and running!
Bart (and you know I respect your math from other threads),
But….. why do you top down guys always start off with the premise that a new technology has to accomplish some massive, close to equal to 100%, requirement for human energy consumption ?? … and use areas the size of 4 Arizonas and all that shit.
It’s kinda nutty.
The consumption of gasoline is around 150 billion gallons per year in the U.S. That is pretty close to infinity for a start-up.
OK, let’s say a biotechnology company makes a product, commercially that penetrates that market at the level of just 1%, YES 1%, with a profit of let’s say 20%. So it sells 1.5 billion gallons at $3 say. OK, $4.5 billion in revenue, COGs and tax 80%. Just a mere $900 million in profit.
How much do you think the exit strategy price of that Company is going to be ???
Worth more than 4% (annually) of Arizona’s desert, I would think !!
As with any other attempt to use diffuse and dispersed resources or energy, it will require LOTS of real estate and LOTS of upfront $$. So I hope it has little or no traction.
Fundamentally, the demonizing of CO2 needs to be reversed.
Phil, we don’t ask for 100% or even some large portion of that to start with. All technologies have to start off tiny on a pilot project basis. But to be viable, they have to be scalable over time. Because of land use, among other things, biotech never will be scalable for bulk energy production.
Think of a bicycle. No matter how superb the human athlete and no matter how aerodynamic it is designed, it is never going to travel 100 km/h by pedal power. To go 100 km, you need the equivalent of an IC engine.
Which is why motorcycles were invented.
Scaling is the most complex, least understood problem in engineering. It is a fact of the physics of this universe that all things exist and can be used on a certain scale and no other. Pure fusion of elemental hydrogen can only be done with something the mass of a star; it cannot be done by any artificial human technology, because no matter how hard you try it is impossible to duplicate artificially.
And we wouldn’t want to. The Sun uses its fuel incredibly inefficiently. And that’s a very good thing if you think about it.
If you look at nuclear, it started off fifty years ago as a handful of tiny pilot plants producing trivial amounts of electricity. But, because of the gigantic energy content of uranium per unit of mass, it was readily admitted that it was scalable to meet a sizeable portion of the world’s electricity requirements. And because of the potential for recycling and breeding, the fuel source would be available for 10’s of thousands of years at essentially any level of demand.
The energy production from nuclear will more than triple if very high temperature reactors are ever developed that can convert directly to electricity without having to go through an expensive, wasteful and dangerous steam machine conversion cycle.
philincalifornia says:
March 31, 2011 at 7:36 pm
I’m all for imaginative people filling niche markets with clever ideas. More power to them. I’m just sick of the hype, because it gives lay people the idea that there really are alternatives to fossil fuels, other than nuclear, which could satisfy our energy appetite if only the Big Bad Corporations, or Big Oil, or “Rethuglicans”, or whatever favored bogeyman would get out of the way.
It’s all about energy density. Fossil fuels have it, because they have been storing energy for eons. Nuclear fuels have it, because of E = mc^2. But, that’s about it, and it’s high time responsible scientists broke the news to the masses.
One more thing, Phil-in-CA… you mention something above about the benefit of even replacing the fuel from one Libya. This is chimerical. Jevons’ paradox says there would be little to no reduction in demand from Libya or wherever.
There would be some additional economic growth, never a bad thing, but don’t count on it, or any other bit player like wind or solar, making a big dent in our long term energy outlook, or significantly diminishing the money flows to undesirable governments.
Actually no, my point about one Libya was purely to illustrate the scale at which bioethanol is currently made in the U.S., which also goes to Colin’s point about engineering. It’s already here and done on land. This was mostly down to the inheritance of hundreds of years of technology from the brewing industries. It’s not exactly a niche.
With gasoline prices set to continue climbing long term due to a continuing greater demand from the developing world, the attractiveness of the field to people with “clever ideas” and an ability to get financial backing is only going to increase.
“It’s not exactly a niche.”
No, it’s a travesty. Even Al Gore admits bioethanol is a boondoggle.
“…the attractiveness of the field to people with “clever ideas” and an ability to get financial backing is only going to increase.”
No doubt. But, it will never be more than a drop in the bucket of our overall energy demand.