Sunlight to produce biofuels. Just put together a nice group of bacteria, water and a special “photovoltaic” leaf. It's not that simple but scientists from MIT and Harvard University succeeded in the enterprise
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves him
Sunlight to produce biofuels. Just put together a nice group of bacteria, water and a special “photovoltaic” leaf. It's not that simple but scientists from MIT and Harvard University succeeded in the enterprise.
Biologists have developed a way to produce liquid fuel from sunlight through one bionic leaf, able to split hydrogen and oxygen from water, with the help of bacteria. The invention could pave the way for numerous innovations by converting solar energy into biofuels. Not to mention that it could solve the problem of the storage of solar energy not used due to the intermittency of some renewable sources.
The current experiment, conducted by Pamela Silver, is based on previous research conducted by Harvard engineer Daniel Nocera, which in 2011 had created an artificial leaf, a special photovoltaic cell that used sunlight to produce energy by separating the hydrogen and oxygen molecules of the water in which it was immersed. At the time it was thought that hydrogen could be used for fuel cells.
Today, biologists they used the same system but asking for help from a genetically modified strain of bacteria capable of combining hydrogen and CO2 to produce isopropyl alcohol, the active ingredient in alcohol. In this way, the natural process of photosynthesis is imitated, learning from plants how to harness the energy of the sun and split water.
"In this work, the development of an integrated bioelectrochmic scalable system in which the bacterium Ralstonia eutropha it is used to effectively convert CO2, together with H2 and O2 produced by water splitting, into biomass and amyl alcohols " explain the scientists.
According to the team, their work was based on the possibility of “using hydrogen from water splitting to reduce carbon dioxide and generate liquid fuels through a biocatalyst”.
According to the scientist, locally produced energy could be useful above all in countries without energy infrastructures, or it could also help the spread of off-grid systems. “Instead of having to buy and store fuel, you can keep the bucket of bacteria in your backyard,” she joked.
The team's immediate challenge now is to increase the leaf's ability to translate solar energy to create biomass by optimizing the catalyst and bacteria. Their goal is to achieve 5% efficiency, compared to the natural rate of 1%.
The study was published in Pnas.
Francesca Mancuso
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