{"id":42894,"date":"2017-05-17T07:20:06","date_gmt":"2017-05-17T05:20:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/?p=42894"},"modified":"2017-05-15T13:28:26","modified_gmt":"2017-05-15T11:28:26","slug":"bacterial-boost-for-bio-based-fuels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/bacterial-boost-for-bio-based-fuels\/","title":{"rendered":"Bacterial boost for bio-based fuels"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"2017-P01364[2]\"
Alex Lewis, a doctoral student with the Bredesen Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Education, samples a microbial electrolysis cell to measure hydrogen and proton concentrations.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cElectrical\u201d bacteria are the key ingredient in a new process developed by the Department of Energy\u2019s Oak Ridge National Laboratory that recycles wastewater from biofuel production to generate hydrogen. The hydrogen can then be used to convert bio-oil into higher grade liquid fuels such as gasoline or diesel.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"APB
Abhijeet Borole<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWe are solving multiple problems at the same time,\u201d said ORNL researcher Abhijeet Borole, who led a multi-year project to develop the system.<\/p>\n

The team\u2019s lab-scale demonstration can produce 11.7 liters of hydrogen per day at rates that are required for industrial applications. Borole notes that although more work is required to bring the technology to the commercial scale, their progress demonstrates the potential of microbial electrolysis to make bio-refineries more efficient and economically viable.<\/p>\n

Much like a conventional petroleum refinery, the bio-refinery concept is focused on the conversion of plant materials into higher value products, including hydrocarbon fuels and chemicals.<\/p>\n

\"Bildschirmfoto
A microbial electrolysis process developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory recycles wastewater from biofuel production into hydrogen<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Microbial electrolysis is powered by electrogens \u2013 bacteria that digest organic compounds and generate an electric current. Borole put these bacteria to work in breaking down organic acids in liquid bio-oil that is produced from plant feedstocks such as switchgrass. Normally, about a quarter of the liquid bio-oil is contaminated water that contains corrosive acids.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are taking this waste, which can be 20 to 30 percent of the biomass that you put into the process, making hydrogen from it and putting that hydrogen back into the oil,\u201d Borole said.<\/p>\n

The hydrogen generated from the microbes could displace the need for natural gas, which is used later in the production process to upgrade bio-oil into more desirable drop-in liquid fuels.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can recycle the water, produce clean hydrogen and eliminate the natural gas,\u201d Borole said.<\/p>\n

The researchers developed a procedure to evolve and enrich a hardy bacterial community that could tolerate the toxic compounds in the biofuel wastewater. This delicate balance also involved optimizing the overall process and system parameters to enable the bacteria\u2019s success.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou are trying to efficiently extract electrons from hundreds of compounds and make hydrogen,\u201d Borole said. \u201cHow do you do that when the plant byproducts are poisoning this bacterial food? You have to find a way to negate or neutralize that poison and be able to produce those electrons at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n

In this application, the bacterial poison comes in the form of products created by the degradation of lignin, a tough polymer found in plant cell walls. But understanding how to build and optimize microbial electrolysis systems that can tolerate and treat contaminated wastewater could have benefits outside of biofuel production.<\/p>\n

\"2017-P01115_0\"
Alex Lewis<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThese systems have potential for wide-ranging applications, including energy production, bioremediation, chemical and nanomaterial synthesis, electro-fermentation, energy storage, desalination and produced water treatment,\u201d said Alex Lewis, a doctoral student with the University of Tennessee\u2019s Bredesen Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Education.<\/p>\n

The research team is now focused on completing a life-cycle analysis for the technology to evaluate its greenhouse gas emissions and water use.<\/p>\n

The team\u2019s latest paper<\/a> is published in Sustainable Energy & Fuels<\/em> as \u201cProton Transfer in Microbial Electrolysis Cells.\u201d The project was funded by DOE\u2019s Bioenergy Technologies Office and ORNL\u2019s Seed Money program.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

About ORNL<\/h3>\n

ORNL is managed by UT-Battelle for DOE\u2019s Office of Science. DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  \u201cElectrical\u201d bacteria are the key ingredient in a new process developed by the Department of Energy\u2019s Oak Ridge National Laboratory that recycles wastewater from biofuel production to generate hydrogen. The hydrogen can then be used to convert bio-oil into higher grade liquid fuels such as gasoline or diesel. \u201cWe are solving multiple problems at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[5831],"supplier":[2437,4192],"class_list":["post-42894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-biorefinery","supplier-oak-ridge-national-laboratory","supplier-university-of-tennessee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42894\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42894"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=42894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}