Solar Fuel

This month’s Technology Review / MIT published “10 Emerging Technologies,” inventions that will shape the future. Number 2 was “Solar Fuel” touting a synthetic photosynthesizing `designer` microbe. Under sunlight, these genetically engineered microbes convert CO2 directly into diesel fuel. Noubar Afeyan of Jouel Biotechnologies in Cambridge, MA is the inventor.

Bio-fuels made from corn drive up the price, and farmers become addicted to the subsidies. Apparently, this synthetic microbial process does not require farmland, water, fertilizer or the multistep process of growing and harvesting crops. More importantly, generating diesel fuel from these microbes, CO2 and sunlight, does not detract from the food supply.

I’ve never understood the enthusiasm for bio-fuels. You still end up with the CO2 product of combustion -- with a thermodynamic inferior to methane or hydrogen. I would bet the byproduct of the microbial generation of diesel is in fact a little hydrogen and a lot of oxygen. The picture shows bubbles.

Hydrogen is by far the most powerful and cleanest fuel with today’s options. If you have read this stuff, you may recall my plea for storing protons, hydrogen ions, as a denser and less costly method of carrying along the hydrogen fuel. With protons, weight and bulk ceases to be a problem. I used as an example the mitochondria. We make hydrogen from the food we eat, and if you study the Krebs Cycle it becomes apparent that we run on protons from the mitochondria. Whilst we run on protons, stored in the mitachondria, Afeyan’s invention makes the fuel directly from the sun like the green leaves with photosynthesis.

Maybe we need to engineer synthetic mitochondria to store ionized hydrogen, protons, created from photosynthesis. Lightweight compact storage is critical for providing hydrogen, protons, for either combustion or direct generation of electric power.

Indeed the solution must be cheap. Low cost oil drove our economy for generations. For many reasons fossil fuel is no longer cheap and sustainable. Hydrogen is the most abundant element on Earth. Cheap Hydrogen without secondary costs can once more drive our economy and accelerate our standard of living.