Bacteria Turns Excess Clean Energy Into Methane for Storage

Scientists at Pennsylvania State University have discovered a solution to the problem of reliable storage for alternative energy: a bacteria that can convert electricity to methane when combined with CO2.

Any surplus power from wind, solar, or tidal sources is fed into the bacteria and combined with CO2 from the atmosphere to create methane for storage. Methane is a clean-burning gas and 80% of energy fed into the process was retained at the end.

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Scientists note that using a bacteria instead of a high-cost catalyst is a promising development that could lead to the process’s implementation in just a few years.

“There are no noble metals involved, so it should be very cheap,” said Tom Curtis at the Institute for Research on Environment and Sustainability at Newcastle University. “You don’t get all the energy back, but that’s a problem with any form of energy storage.”

Other ideas for energy storage include batteries, splitting and recombining water molecules, and of course redesigning the energy grid to handle fluctuating energy outputs.

[Via New Scientist]

Photo Credit: Mountain/\Ash on Flickr under Creative Commons license.

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