Media Platforms Design TeamThe footage of oil that continues to gush into the Gulf of Mexico is a stark reminder that the United States’ reliance on liquid fuel has consequences. A substantial portion of this fuel powers vehicles: In 2008, 97 percent of energy consumed for transportation in the U.S. was supplied by liquid fuel—much of which was made from oil imported from foreign countries. Photosynthetic plant and algae-derived biofuels are additional sources of fuel (think ethanol and biodiesel) but today’s technologies are less than 1 percent efficient at converting sunlight into energy we can use. Organisms use several other ways besides photosynthesis to convert carbon dioxide into energy, but so far these have remained relatively unexplored for their biofuel potential. Recently, the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) awarded $40 million dollars to 13 projects researching alternative approaches to making fuel out of existing and synthetic organisms. Each grant will last three years. The programs explore options for coaxing organisms to make energy-dense liquid fuel, including the design of metabolic pathways not found in nature. In theory, these approaches “could be 10 times more efficient” than the technologies used today to produce liquid biofuel, according to ARPA-E’s website. Here’s a look at the big money being invested on a variety of projects. Official Name: Engineering E. coli as an Electrofuels Chassis for Iso-octane ProductionLead Organization: Ginkgo BioWorks Organism: E. coliProject Goal: Engineer E. coli to convert carbon dioxide and electrical energy into ingredients for iso-octane, a fuel that can be applied to existing fuel infrastructure for U.S. transportation.Official Name: Novel Biological Conversion of Hydrogen and Carbon Dioxide Directly into biodieselLead Organization: OPX Biotechnologies Inc.Organism: Cupriavidus necatorProject Goal: Develop a new, genetically engineered micro-organism that can produce biodiesel from hydrogen and carbon dioxide. Official Name: Engineering a Bacterial Reverse Fuel CellLead Organization: Harvard Medical School–Wyss InstituteOrganism: N/AProject Goal: Engineer a bacterium that can absorb electrical current and turn it into octanol. Official Name: Electro-Autotrophic Synthesis of Higher AlcoholsLead Organization: University of California–Los AngelesOrganism: N/AProject Goal: Genetically engineer micro-organisms to use electricity instead of sunlight to make a high-octane gasoline substitute.Official Name: Bioconversion of Carbon Dioxide to Biofuels by Facultatively Autotrophic Hydrogen BacteriaLead Organization: Ohio State UniversityOrganism: Hydrogen BacteriaProject Goals: Develop genetically modified bacteria that use carbon dioxide, oxygen and hydrogen to produce butanol. Also, build an industrially scalable bioreactor and a new way to recover butanol from the reactor. Official Name: Development of an Integrated Microbial-ElectroCatalytic (MEC) System for Liquid Biofuel Production from CO2Lead Organization: Lawrence Berkeley National LaboratoryOrganism: Ralstonia eutrophaProject Goals: Develop a combined microbial and electrochemical catalytic system that converts hydrogen and carbon dioxide into butanol, and find a chemical method to convert butanol into jet fuel. Official Name: Bioprocess and Microbe Engineering for Total Carbon Utilization in Biofuel ProductionLead Organization: Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyOrganism: Anaerobic and aerobic microbes.Project Goal: Develop a process that will use an anaerobic—able to live without Oxygen—microbe to produce an organic compound that a second aerobic microbe can convert to oil that can be used to make biodiesel. Official Name: Hydrogen-Dependent Conversion of Carbon Dioxide to Liquid Electrofuels by Extremely Thermophilic ArchaeaLead Organization: North Carolina State UniversityOrganism: ArchaeaProject Goal: Using microbes that live in extremely high-temperature environments, develop a new process that converts carbon dioxide into biofuel precursors. Official Name: Electroalcoholgenesis: Bioelectrochemical Reduction of CO2 to ButanolLead Organization: Medical University of South CarolinaOrganism: N/AProject Goal: Develop an electrolysis cell that will employ microbes that can use electricity to convert carbon dioxide into ethanol and butanol. Official Name: Engineering Ralstonia eutropha for Production of Isobutanol (IBT) Motor Fuel From Carbon Dioxide, Hydrogen & Oxygen Lead Organization: Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyOrganism: Ralstonia eutrophaProject Goal: Engineer Ralstonia eutropha to make butanol. Official Name: Development of Rhodobacter as a Versatile Microbial Platform for Fuels ProductionLead Organization: Penn State UniversityOrganism: RhodobacterProject Goal: Insert genes from oil-producing algae into Rhodobacter, a hydrogen-consuming bacteria, so it can use electricity to make gasoline. Official Name: Electrofuels via Direct Electron Transfer from Electrodes to MicrobesLead Organization: University of Massachusetts–Amherst Organism: N/A Project Goal: Increase efficiency of microorganisms that are already capable of making biofuel. Official Name: Biofuels from CO2 Using Ammonia-Oxidizing Bacteria in a Reverse Microbial Fuel CellLead Organization: Columbia UniversityOrganism: N. europaeaProject Goal: Genetically modify N. europaea to use ammonia to make butanol.
Project Goal: Increase efficiency of microorganisms that are already capable of making biofuel.
