New Butanol Producing Organisms Announced

Uppsala University researchers have successfully produced microorganisms that can efficiently produce the alcohol butanol using carbon dioxide and solar energy. The researchers press release is optimistic that we will be able to replace fossil fuels with a carbon-neutral product created from solar energy, carbon dioxide and water.

The researchers have published their study in the scientific journal Energy & Environmental Science.

Pia Lindberg, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Chemistry Ångström Laboratory, Uppsala University explained they have systematically designed and created a series of modified cyanobacteria that gradually produced increasing quantities of butanol in direct processes. When the best cells are used in long-term laboratory experiments, they see levels of production that exceed levels that have been reported in existing articles. Most impressive, it is comparable with indirect processes where bacteria are fed with sugar.

The knowledge and ability to modify cyanobacteria so they can produce a variety of chemicals from carbon dioxide and solar energy is emerging in parallel with advances in technology, synthetic biology, genetically changing them. Through a combination of technical development, systematic methods and the discovery that as more product removed from the cyanobacteria, the more butanol is formed, the study shows the way forward for realizing the concept.

The Uppsala team already knew it is possible to produce butanol using this process (proof-of-concept). What researchers have now been able to show is that it is possible to achieve significantly higher production, so high that it becomes possible to use in production. In practical terms, butanol can be used in the automotive industry as both an environmentally friendly vehicle fuel – fourth generation biofuel – and as an environmentally friendly component of rubber for tires. In both cases, fossil fuels are replaced by a carbon-neutral product created from solar energy, carbon dioxide and water.

Even larger industries, in all trades, that currently produce high greenhouse gas emissions from carbon dioxide will be able to use the process with cyanobacteria to bind carbon dioxide recycling it and consequently significantly reduce their emissions.

Peter Lindblad, Professor at the Department of Chemistry Ångström Laboratory at Uppsala University who is leading the project explained microscopic cyanobacteria are the most efficient photosynthetic organisms on earth. In this study, they utilized their ability to efficiently capture the sun’s energy and bind to carbon dioxide in the air, alongside with all the tools science has to modify cyanobacteria to produce desirable products. The results show that a direct production of carbon-neutral chemicals and fuels from solar energy will be a possibility in the future,

The research at Uppsala University is part of the larger EU Photofuel project being coordinated by vehicle manufacturer VW whose aim is to develop the next generation of techniques for sustainable manufacture of alternative fuels in the transport sector.

Butanol has been missing in action for years. As a near drop in replacement for gasoline with comparable energy content the butanol market would be an shoe in. The one problem has been separating out the butanol before it poisons the feedstock.

But now, with only carbon dioxide as a feedstock, that problem may be bypassed. We will see, and will be keeping a eye out for what progress this team makes.