Breakthrough Discovery: Microbes that Generate Methane from Renewable Energy
In a surprising find, scientists have discovered a microbe that can efficiently convert direct electrical current into methane.
That may be good news for wind and solar power enthusiasts, who have long been faced with the dilemma of how to store energy when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining. This discovery opens the door for generating methane from those renewable power sources; the energy could then be stored as fuel for later use.
But is storing renewable energy in the form of a greenhouse gas like methane a solution, or just another problem?
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The remarkable microbe, Methanobacterium palustre, is the first to be found which can biochemically synthesize methane using electrons directly from current in combination with hydrogen gas. Most significantly, it appears to transform the energy at 80% efficiency. That’s pretty darn good, according to researchers.
Before this discovery, the options were limited regarding how to store energy generated from wind or solar sources. Storing it in large capacitors and batteries offered the most practical solution, since converting the energy into a fuel like hydrogen made it difficult to compress and store. But that problem doesn’t exist for methane, which is the main component for natural gas. Natural gas is already carried around the world in pipelines, and it’s used in conventional engines.
Though despite the good news, utilizing this process may overlook some of the bigger reasons for switching to renewable energy. Specifically, if the primary benefit for using wind and solar energy is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, then wouldn’t converting that energy into methane miss the point?
Yes and no. Methane is a very clean burning fuel, and compared to other hydrocarbons, burning methane produces less carbon dioxide for each unit of heat released. In other words, if the choice is between storing excess wind or solar energy as methane or having to use traditional, dirtier fuels like gas or coal to pick up the leftover energy burden, then converting clean energy into methane– while perhaps not the ideal solution– is still a significant step forward.
More research needs to be conducted to determine the exact molecular mechanism of the biochemical process, and practical means for employing the technology have yet to be worked out. But the exciting discovery does shed some creative light on the potential for renewable sources to supply all of our energy needs.
Source: Environmental Science & Technology
Image Credit: austrini on Flickr under a Creative Commons License
Storing energy is the main challange in Renewable energy generation. It appars too good to be true. However more work with commercial angle would clear all apprehentions. I wish great success to the scientists working on the project.
Electrolysis of water using DC current from excess solar or wind generation will also produce Oxygen and Hydrogen which can also be used directly for energy storage. Don’t know the efficiency levels, but Oxygen has many medical, commercial and industrial uses and atmospheric oxygen for combustion is inexpensive and the combustion product is water. Hydrogen is harder to store and transport
Where is the hydrogen coming from
Isn’t the Hydrogen source coming from water?? This then puts back presumably two molecule of O2 by taking one molecule of CO2.
2H20 + CO2 -> CH4 + 2O2
But we need to remember this is a cyclic conversion because as you burn CH4 you also us O2.
CH4 + 2O2 -> CO2 + 2H2O
Anyway my chemistry may be wrong, please correct me. But if we are to fully understand what is going on we need to think of it in these terms.
[...] that can generate electricity from mud and wastewater, as well as microbes that can generate methane from an electrical current, potentially creating efficient, low-cost storage for electricity [...]