Advanced Bioenergy Systems - Microbial Electrosynthesis

Traditionally, biology has been employed for providing renewable energy primarily by producing biomass or in fermentations thereof to low molecular weight fuels. However, the low efficiencies of conversion, the chemical heterogeneity of biomass, and the significant impact on resources motivated exploring other molecular biocatalytic processes for developing new bioenergy platform technologies. Microbial electrosynthesis is an emerging technology for storing electrical energy and for producing CO2-neutral organic commodity chemicals and fuels. At the core is the observation that certain microorganisms take up electrons from a cathode. These electrons are subsequently metabolized via the energy metabolism of the microorganism.  This talk reports research in microbial electrosynthesis and places this technology into context of traditional use of biology.

Speaker: Alfred Spormann, Stanford