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How to put a hydrogen fuel factory inside the shell of a virus? Living cells are masters of compartmentalization. Whether it’s stuffing DNA inside the nucleus or cramming energy-generating machinery into the rod-shape organelles called mitochondria, biology separates tasks into specialized compartments within cells to make it easier to do specific jobs without interference.
Researchers in Indiana are following that same strategy to isolate enzymes inside hollow virus-made nanoparticles in order to make hydrogen for fuel. The process does not yet produce enough hydrogen to compete with commercial alternatives. But the researchers, whose results appear today in Nature Chemistry, already have their sights set on improvements aimed at generating large amounts of fuel cheaply.
Via Mariaschnee
Algae, which causes a lot of damage to the marine ecosystem by creating water blooms and red tides, is now turning into the next-generation raw material of eco-friendly biofuels, including biodiesel and bioethanol.
Until now, biofuels have been produced from first-generation grass feed stock, such as corn and sugar cane, or second-generation plant feed stock, including corn stalk and rice husks. However, using grass feed stock aggravates shortages of food among low-income groups by raising the price of grain, while plant feed stock has limitations like low yields. As a third-generation raw material that will overcome such weak points, marine algae and microalgae are in the spotlight from the global biofuels industry.
In particular, they absorb carbon dioxide in the process of growth. So, when marine algae and microalgae are provided carbon dioxide emitted from thermal power plants and breweries, they can reduce carbon dioxide emissions and produce biofuels at the same time. According to a survey, 180 tons of carbon dioxide are decreased when producing 100 tons of microalgae.
Sohn Jong-koo, senior researcher at the Industry Information Analysis Center at KISTI, said, “Currently, the U.S. accounts for 50 percent of the algae biofuel market, while Europe accounts for 30 percent. Korea, Japan, China, Australia and Israel are now going after them.” Sohn expects that the related market will be created in earnest, beginning this year, as commercial plants will be constructed in earnest. In fact, market research firm Pike Research has forecasted that the algae biofuel market this year will be estimated at US$1.6 billion (1.88 trillion won), and it will rapidly grow by 812 percent in the next five years to reach US$13 billion (15.3 trillion won) in 2020. It means that 61 million gallons, or 230 million liters, of algae biofuels will be sold around the world five years after that.
In a bid to tap into such a huge market, South Korean government-funded research institutes and private firms are advancing technology based on government-level support. The country is aiming to construct 500,000 hectares of marine algae farms by 2020 and produce 227 million liters of bioethanol annually, taking over 20 percent of domestic gasoline consumption.
Via Marko Dolinar
A major new technology has been developed by The University of Nottingham, which enables all of the world’s crops to take nitrogen from the air rather than expensive and environmentally damaging fertilisers. Nitrogen fixation, the process by which nitrogen is converted to ammonia, is vital for plants to survive and grow. However, only a very small number of plants, most notably legumes (such as peas, beans and lentils) have the ability to fix nitrogen from the atmosphere with the help of nitrogen fixing bacteria. The vast majority of plants have to obtain nitrogen from the soil, and for most crops currently being grown across the world, this also means a reliance on synthetic nitrogen fertiliser. Professor Edward Cocking, Director of The University of Nottingham’s Centre for Crop Nitrogen Fixation, has developed a unique method of putting nitrogen-fixing bacteria into the cells of plant roots. His major breakthrough came when he found a specific strain of nitrogen-fixing bacteria in sugar-cane which he discovered could intracellularly colonise all major crop plants. This ground-breaking development potentially provides every cell in the plant with the ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen. The implications for agriculture are enormous as this new technology can provide much of the plant’s nitrogen needs. A leading world expert in nitrogen and plant science, Professor Cocking has long recognised that there is a critical need to reduce nitrogen pollution caused by nitrogen based fertilisers. Nitrate pollution is a major problem as is also the pollution of the atmosphere by ammonia and oxides of nitrogen. In addition, nitrate pollution is a health hazard and also causes oxygen-depleted ‘dead zones’ in our waterways and oceans. A recent study estimates that that the annual cost of damage caused by nitrogen pollution across Europe is £60 billion — £280 billion a year. Speaking about the technology, which is known as ‘N-Fix’, Professor Cocking said: “Helping plants to naturally obtain the nitrogen they need is a key aspect of World Food Security. The world needs to unhook itself from its ever increasing reliance on synthetic nitrogen fertilisers produced from fossil fuels with its high economic costs, its pollution of the environment and its high energy costs.”
N-Fix is neither genetic modification nor bio-engineering. It is a naturally occurring nitrogen fixing bacteria which takes up and uses nitrogen from the air. Applied to the cells of plants (intra-cellular) via the seed, it provides every cell in the plant with the ability to fix nitrogen. Plant seeds are coated with these bacteria in order to create a symbiotic, mutually beneficial relationship and naturally produce nitrogen.
N-Fix is a natural nitrogen seed coating that provides a sustainable solution to fertiliser overuse and Nitrogen pollution. It is environmentally friendly and can be applied to all crops. Over the last 10 years, The University of Nottinghamhas conducted a series of extensive research programmes which have established proof of principal of the technology in the laboratory, growth rooms and glasshouses.
Biologists at UC San Diego have demonstrated for the first time that marine algae can be just as capable as fresh water algae in producing biofuels. Salt ponds in the SF Bay area where the marine algae Dunaliella salina display a bright red color in response to the stress of high salt concentrations. The scientists genetically engineered marine algae to produce five different kinds of industrially important enzymes and say the same process they used could be employed to enhance the yield of petroleum-like compounds from these salt water algae. Their achievement is detailed in a paper published online in the current issue of the scientific journal Algal Research. The ability to genetically transform marine algae into a biofuel crop is important because it expands the kinds of environments in which algae can be conceivably grown for biofuels. Corn, for example, which is used to produce ethanol biofuel, requires prime farmland and lots of fresh water. But the UC San Diego study suggests that algal biofuels can be produced in the ocean or in the brackish water of tidelands or even on agricultural land on which crops can no longer be grown because of high salt content in the soil. "What our research shows is that we can achieve in marine species exactly what we've already done in fresh water species," said Stephen Mayfield, a professor of biology at UC San Diego, who headed the research project. "There are about 10 million acres of land across the United States where crops can no longer be grown that could be used to produce algae for biofuels. Marine species of algae tend to tolerate a range of salt environments, but many fresh water species don't do the reverse. They don't tolerate any salt in the environment." "The algal community has worked on fresh water species of algae for 40 years," added Mayfield, who also directs the San Diego Center for Algae Biotechnology, or SD-CAB, a consortium of research institutions in the region working to make algal biofuels a viable transportation fuel in the future. "We know how to grow them, manipulate them genetically, express recombinant proteins—all of the things required to make biofuels viable. It was always assumed that we could do the same thing in marine species, but there was always some debate in the community as to whether that could really be done." Scaling up the production of biofuels made from algae to meet at least 5 percent – about 10 billion gallons – of U.S. transportation fuel needs would place unsustainable demands on energy, water and nutrients, says a new report from the National Research Council, or NRC. However, these concerns are not a definitive barrier for future production, and innovations that would require research and development could help realize algal biofuels' full potential.
A humble soil bacterium called Ralstonia eutropha has a natural tendency, whenever it is stressed, to stop growing and put all its energy into making complex carbon compounds. Now scientists at MIT have taught this microbe a new trick: They’ve tinkered with its genes to persuade it to make fuel — specifically, a kind of alcohol called isobutanol that can be directly substituted for, or blended with, gasoline.
For more than a decade, hydrogen has been touted as a clean alternative to fossil fuels because it releases a significant amount of energy relative to its weight and also produces nothing but water when it burns. It can also be produced cleanly, using biological methods, such as photosynthesis. However, the high costs incurred in production have proved too big an obstacle to allow for its wide-spread use. New technology from researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University greatly improves the efficiency with which hydrogen can be produced in one type of microbe -- potentially bringing biological production of this clean fuel source one step closer to economic feasibility. Their discovery, resulted in a 500-fold increase in the amount of hydrogen produced in the bacterium used in this research.
By pairing biology and photovoltaics, a new "electrofuel" system could build alternative fuels. A new "bioreactor" could store electricity as liquid fuel with the help of a genetically engineered microbe and copious carbon dioxide. The idea—dubbed "electrofuels" by a federal agency funding the research—could offer electricity storage that would have the energy density of fuels such as gasoline. If it works, the hybrid bioelectric system would also offer a more efficient way of turning sunlight to fuel than growing plants and converting them into biofuel.
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Scientists have worked out how to cultivate green algae for biofuel in huge quantities at US$50 a barrel, which is about the cost of crude oil. They have even found a way to get electrical energy directly from cyanobacteria or blue-green algae. And they have exploited an alloy that can deliver a colossal pulse of electric power when you kick it.
None of these technologies have advanced beyond the experimental stage, but all are testaments to the ingenuity now being deployed in the world’s laboratories and experimental start-ups.
Fusion power—not to be confused with nuclear fission—exploits the thermonuclear conversion of hydrogen to helium with little or no noxious discharge and the generous release of energy.
This is what powers the sun and fuels the planet’s life. It is also the basis of the thermonuclear bomb. For the last 60 years, humans have been trying to make fusion work peacefully on Earth, with only tantalizing flickers of success.
But if it does work, British scientists report in the journal Fusion Engineering and Design, it will not be too expensive. They analyzed the cost of building, running and ultimately decommissioning a fusion power station and found it comparable to fission or nuclear energy.
The challenge of nuclear fusion is to heat stripped-down heavy hydrogen atoms to 100 million Celsius so that they fuse into helium, while finding a way to tap the released energy and at the same time keep the reaction going.
The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, now being built in the South of France, might in a decade show that it could happen. Assuming it works, the process should be affordable. There would be no high-level radioactive waste, no problems with finding fuel and no by-product that could be turned into nuclear weaponry.
“Obviously we have had to make assumptions, but what we can say is that our predictions suggest fusion won’t be vastly more expensive than fission,” said Damian Hampshire, of the Center for Materials Physics at Durham University, UK.
For decades, Brazil and the United States were the major countries producing biofuels.In Brazil, sugarcane was the raw material and ethanol producers simply fermented the extracted sugars. The spent cane (bagasse) was fed into solid fuel boilers to produce steam and power, and the excess was sold as bedding or became waste. In the United States, corn was the raw material; the starch was converted to sugar and fermented. Dried distillers grain was a by-product and was sold as animal feed. The cornhusks and stover were usually left in the fields to maintain soil fertility and structure. Most U.S. corn ethanol producers used natural gas to supply process heat. Sugarcane and corn for both processesis renewable.
Corn ethanol has been criticized for inefficiency and for not being sustainable. The industry is improving land use by increasing yield, gaining 30 to 50 percent yield through using spent crops. Energy required per gallon has decreased from 37,000 BTU per gallon in 1994 to 23,862 BTU per gallon in 2012. Similar gains have been made in reducing water consumption. As industries mature, they typically become more efficient. In the United States, corn ethanol may not have been the best gasoline replacement, but it has brought significant benefits. In particular, it became a profitable, commercial business segment with steady employment that provided financial benefit to farmers, helped lower the price of gasoline by about a dollar per gallon, deferred the importation of about 450 million barrels of oil in 2013, and helped the U.S. balance of trade by about $45 billion annually.
The 85 million gallon annual cellulosic ethanol capacity is dominated by the agriculture community, which is making significant commercial progress through working with farmers, agronomists and harvesting equipment suppliers to achieve low-cost, sustainable feedstocks. A variety of technical approaches have been developed, and more are emerging to improve the economics of operations:
POET-DSM Advanced Biofuels, which held a grand opening in September 2014 in Emmetsburg, Iowa, will produce 20 million annual gallons (growing to 25 million) of cellulosic ethanol from corn stover. The plant is located adjacent to a POET 55 million annual gallon corn ethanol plant. The stover feedstock is gathered after corn harvest. Seventy-five percent of the corn crop residue is left in the field, which studies have shown is sufficient to maintain soil fertility. The smaller size for the cellulosic ethanol plant was selected in part to be able to gather biomass from a nominal 45-mile radius. The process for the corn stover after harvest involves pretreatment, enzymatic hydrolysis to sugars, fermentation to ethanol and, finally, distillation. The effluent stream from the cellulosic plant is sent to an anaerobic digester to produce biogas that is used in both plants. The solid stream of lignin is burned in a solid fuel boiler to produce steam for both plants.
In Hugoton, Kansas, Abengoa will produce 25 million annual gallons of cellulosic ethanol and 18 megawatts (MW) of power from wheat straw and agricultural waste. The process is similar to that of POET-DSM. Residuals are sent to a solid fuel boiler to produce process heat and power. At the time of writing, DuPont was slated to start up a 29 million annual gallon cellulosic ethanol plant from corn stover in Nevada, Iowa, in late 2014. The process will be similar to the two described above.
INEOS Bio, based in Vero Beach, Fla., has eliminated forest waste as a feedstock and is supplementing citrus waste with sorted municipal solid waste (SMSW); they will continue to make 8 million annual gallons of cellulosic ethanol and generate 6 MW of power. The process includes pretreatment, gasification, syngas cleanup, anaerobic fermentation to ethanol and distillation. Steam recovered from the gasification/cleanup stage is passed through a turbine to generate power, and the extracted steam from the turbine is used for process heat.
Quad County Corn Processors is producing 2 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol per year using corn kernel cellulose (a corn fiber waste product) as feedstock. The corn kernel cellulose is a byproduct of the firm’s 35 million gallon per year corn ethanol plant. Quad County invented and patented Cellerate technology and recently granted Syngenta an exclusive license to market the process to other ethanol plants in the United States and Canada. Cellerate technology has the ability to generate 1 billion gallons of additional ethanol by adding the bolt-on technology to the existing dry grind ethanol plants without using any more corn.
In Alpena, Mich., American Process, Inc. (API) is producing about 1 million annual gallons of cellulosic ethanol per year from the hemicellulose in the effluent obtained from an adjacent hardboard mill. The mill washes its fiber to remove some hemicellulose to prevent the hardboard sticking to the plates during hot pressing. Previously, these hemicellulose materials wound up in the mill’s effluent stream. BDC maintains metrics on these and other plants and can estimate capital cost, operating cost, time to construct, federal and state incentives and details about technology and commercial potential.
Documented progress is also occurring outside the United States as well as in emerging facilities within the U.S.:
Beta Renewables established a 12 million annual gallon cellulosic ethanol facility in Italy, licensed a second plant in Brazil (Gran Bio) and is licensing its third and fourth plants in North Carolina and the Slovak Republic.
GranBio in Brazil is producing 21.6 million annual gallons of cellulosic ethanol from bagasse using the Beta Renewables technology.
Enerkem, in Alberta, Canada, is producing 10 million annual gallons of bio-methanol from SMSW.
Fiberight, in Iowa, is restarting 6 million annual gallons of cellulosic ethanol from SMSW and paper mill sludge.
Dong Energy in Denmark has a demonstration plant with a capacity of 0.8 tons of cellulosic ethanol and 1.5 tons of bio-pellets per hour. If the plant were to run full time this would amount to 1.8 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol and 13,000 tonnes of biopellets per year.
Husky Energy in Alberta, Canada, is very interesting because it captures and sells or uses 250 tons of CO2 from its corn ethanol fermenters.
Chemists at the University of California, Davis, have engineered blue-green algae to grow chemical precursors for fuels and plastics — the first step in replacing fossil fuels as raw materials for the chemical industry.
Biological reactions are good at forming carbon-carbon bonds, using carbon dioxide as a raw material for reactions powered by sunlight. It’s called photosynthesis, and cyanobacteria, also known as “blue-green algae,” have been doing it for more than 3 billion years. Using cyanobacteria to grow chemicals has other advantages: they do not compete with food needs, like corn’s role in the creation of ethanol. The challenge is to get the cyanobacteria to make significant amounts of chemicals that can be readily converted to chemical feedstocks. 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 identified enzymes from online databases that carried out the reactions they were looking for, and then introduced the DNA for these enzymes into the cells. Working a step at a time, they 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 said. Atsumi hopes to tune the system to increase productivity further and experiment with other products, while corporate partners explore scaling up the technology.
Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion (MPI CEC) and the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) have found through spectroscopic investigations on a hydrogen-producing enzyme that the environment of the catalytic site acts as an electron reservoir in the enzyme. Thus, it can very efficiently produce hydrogen, which has great potential as a renewable energy source. The research team describes their results in the journal “Angewandte Chemie”.
The system analysed constitutes an enzyme that catalyses the formation and conversion of hydrogen. In its centre it has a double-iron core, and is therefore also called [FeFe] hydrogenase. Hydrogenases are of great interest for energy research, since they can efficiently produce hydrogen. However, new catalysts can only be developed given a deep understanding of their mode of action.
In hydrogen production, two electrons get together with two protons. The research team showed that, as expected, the first electron is initially transferred to the iron centre of the enzyme. The second transfer on the other hand is to an iron-sulphur cluster that is located in the periphery. It thus forms a temporary storage for the second electron. This “super-reduced” state may be responsible for the extremely high efficiency of the hydrogenase. Subsequently both electrons are transferred in one step from the enzyme to the protons, so that hydrogen is generated. “Only the use of two different spectroscopic techniques made the discovery possible”, says Agnieszka Adamska, a doctoral student at MPI CEC who carried out the spectroscopic studies.
“Up to 10,000 molecules of hydrogen per second can be generated by a single [FeFe] centre”, says Camilla Lambertz, a postdoc at the RUB who prepared the biological samples for the project. The enzyme is thus among the most efficient hydrogenases and is therefore also being intensively investigated by biologists and chemists with a view to achieving environmentally friendly hydrogen production. The complete mechanism of hydrogen formation is, however, complex and several steps need to be clarified. Next, the researchers at MPI CEC and the Ruhr-Universität Bochum aim to use sensitive spectroscopic methods to locate the proton to which the two electrons are transferred. This negatively charged hydrogen atom (hydride) reacts with another proton to form hydrogen. Inspired by the [FeFe] hydrogenase, the researchers would like to develop their own hydrogen-producing catalysts that could be used for the generation of hydrogen.
Engineers at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) have identified a catalyst that provides the same level of efficiency in microbial fuel cells (MFCs) as the currently used platinum catalyst, but at 5% of the cost. Since more than 60% of the investment in making microbial fuel cells is the cost of platinum, the discovery may lead to much more affordable energy conversion and storage devices. The material — nitrogen-enriched iron-carbon nanorods — also has the potential to replace the platinum catalyst used in hydrogen-producing microbial electrolysis cells (MECs), which use organic matter to generate a possible alternative to fossil fuels.
In their simplest form, biofuel cells have two electrodes, one which removes electrons from a fuel - for instance glucose or hydrogen - whilst the other donates electrons to molecules of oxygen, making water. When these are connected by a wire, they form a circuit, resulting in an electrical current. Dr Jeuken and his team have extensive experience in making electrodes that directly interact with enzymes located in the membranes that surround cells. This new project will begin by applying this technique to two specific groups of enzymes, one which harnesses light and the other, hydrogen. These are found in membranes of chloroplast - the parts of cells which conduct photosynthesis - or bacterial cells, both of which have promising applications in biofuel cells. The final part of the project will aim to connect electrodes to the membranes of living bacterial cells.
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