Maybe Just Maybe...

A new way to make valuable chemicals and more affordable “green” fuel from solar power, bacteria and carbon dioxide could be "truly transformative" for our society if it works on a commercial scale, says microbiologist Derek Lovley, head of a research group developing the method at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

“This could be the most exciting and significant development in alternative fuels in years,” Lovley says. His microbial electrosynthesis (ME) process is carbon neutral and uses solar energy more efficiently than plants. In fact, it provides a solution to one of the major problems of using solar panels to produce electricity: Storage. This technique immediately turns solar power directly into chemicals, which are then readily stored with existing infrastructure and distributed on demand.

Further, ME requires no biomass feedstock or arable land, uses far less water and requires no elaborate post-production fermentation, for example. And, once established, the microbial cells and electrode food sources don’t get used up, so they are more than 90 percent efficient at turning electrons into fuel without further processing. Lovley and colleagues published their experimental results and discuss implications in the current, May issue of mBIO, an online journal of the American Society of Microbiology.

Maybe just maybe this tech will work as it looks like it has legs, particularly in the energy storage part of the equation. If so, perhaps we can finally say goodbye to the BP's of the world who sell the Devil's Excrement to those who have the money to buy it, no matter what the cost may be.

Higgins: It's simple economics. Today it's oil, right? In ten or fifteen years, food. Plutonium. Maybe even sooner. Now, what do you think the people are gonna want us to do then? 
Joe Turner: Ask them? 
Higgins: Not now - then! Ask 'em when they're running out. Ask 'em when there's no heat in their homes and they're cold. Ask 'em when their engines stop. Ask 'em when people who have never known hunger start going hungry. You wanna know something? They won't want us to ask 'em. They'll just want us to get it for 'em! - 
Three Days of the Condor