Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

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See jarenmf's comment. Basically the CO2 is catalyzed into Methane using an 'inorganic catalyst', there is this paper[1] which uses a ruthenium catalyst at 400 degrees C to do it.

Then the methane is consumed by some genetically modified bacteria (probably e.coli) first to convert it to an intermediate product, and then with a second organism to convert it into starch.

In the article they talk about genetically modified enzymes and I've actually jumped ahead to the using genetically modified bacteria here[2]. I think that is a safe assumption as a number of bio-reactors do exactly this.

What is somewhat interesting to me is that livestock generates a lot of methane, if you could harvest it and convert it back into starch to feed the livestock you could increase the efficiency of raising livestock farming.

[1] https://phys.org/news/2020-02-method-carbon-dioxide-methane-...

[2] The article hasn't appeared in sci-hub yet :-)

Most of the methane comes from cattle belching, so it's basically impossible to harvest at scale. The lagoons of manure also do, and that can be harvested though it's hard.

https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/33/which-is-a-bigger-methane-so...

I came up with this solution: https://i.imgur.com/8BNktVY.png

I nominated you for IgNobel 2022

the CO2 is converted to methanol not methane. theoretically 3 equivalents of dihydrogen (which you need energy to produce) are needed per CO2. the hydrogenation requires veery high concentrations of CO2 (energy needed to concentrate it) and H2 so from the energy point of view it is not that good. however from the point of view of bio-engineering it is a really nice result

Agreed, this result is more about creating 'food' without plants than it is saving costs. The useful thing is that it shows a path for out-of-ecosystem food production which will be useful in places like Mars or a Lunar colony.

> ...requires veery high concentrations of CO2 (energy needed to concentrate it)...

I wish we had a process similar in efficiency to a heat pump that moves gradients of diffuse molecules than thermal energy. But the osmotic pressure or other diffuse gradient movement methods I'm aware of are quite energy intensive.

"CO2 is catalyzed into Methane using an 'inorganic catalyst', there is this paper[1] which uses a ruthenium catalyst at 400 degrees C" that either alchemy or more energy consuming than agriculture. "Silver-gray ruthenium metal looks like platinum but is rarer," - great to keep the costs down and avoid wars in places like congo eh? ;)

Thanks. Isn’t it cheating to use bacteria? I thought this was all synthetic.

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