MVP Lithium to use Evove’s direct lithium extraction technology in Montney in 2025
GKN Hydrogen, SoCalGas & NREL begin solid state hydrogen storage demonstration project

Researchers use electrocatalysis of CO2 to create biodiesel; 45-times more efficient than soybean-based biodiesel production

Researchers from Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Missouri, and their collaborators at Texas A&M University, have used electrocatalysis of carbon dioxide to create an electro-biodiesel that is 45-times more efficient and uses 45-times less land than soybean-based biodiesel production.

Results of their work are published Joule.

This novel idea can be applied to the circular economy to manufacture emission-negative fuels, chemicals, materials and food ingredients at a much higher efficiency than photosynthesis and with fewer carbon emissions than petrochemicals. We have systemically addressed the challenges in electro-biomanufacturing by identifying the metabolic and biochemical limits of diatomic carbon use and have overcome these limits.

—Joshua Yuan, co-corresponding author

The team used electrocatalysis to convert carbon dioxide into biocompatible intermediates, such as acetate and ethanol. The intermediates were then converted by microbes into lipids, or fatty acids, and ultimately became biodiesel feedstock, said Yuan, who is also director of the National Science Foundation-funded Carbon Utilization Redesign for Biomanufacturing-Empowered Decarbonization Engineering Research Center at WashU.

Fx1_lrg (1)

Chen et al.


The novel microbial and catalyst process allowed the electro-biodiesel to reach 4.5% solar-to-molecule efficiency for converting carbon dioxide to lipid, which is considerably more efficient than biodiesel. Nature photosynthesis in land plants is normally below 1%, where less than 1% of sunlight energy is converted to plant biomass by converting CO2 to diverse molecules for plant growth, Yuan explained.

To prompt the electrocatalysis, the team designed a new zinc- and copper-based catalyst that produces diatomic carbon intermediates that could be converted into lipids with an engineered strain of the Rhodococcus jostiii (RHA1) bacterium, known to produce high lipid content. This strain also boosted the metabolic potential of ethanol, which could help to prompt conversion of acetate, an intermediate, to the fatty acid.

After developing the novel process, the team analyzed the impact of the process on climate change and found encouraging results. By using renewable resources for the electrocatalysis, the electro-biodiesel process could reduce 1.57 grams of carbon dioxide per gram of electro-biodiesel produced with the byproducts of biomass, ethylene and others, giving it the potential for negative emissions. In contrast, conventional diesel production from petroleum produces 0.52 grams of carbon dioxide per gram, and biodiesel production methods produce 2.5 grams to 9.9 grams of carbon dioxide per gram of lipids produced.

This research proves the concept for a broad platform for highly efficient conversion of renewable energy into chemicals, fuels and materials to address the fundamental limits of human civilization. This process could relieve the biodiesel feedstock shortage and transform broad, renewable fuel, chemical and material manufacturing by achieving independence from fossil fuel in the sectors that are fossil-fuel dependent, such as long-range heavy-duty vehicles and aircraft.

—Joshua Yuan

Resources

  • Chen K, Zhang P, Chen Y, Fei C, Yu J, Zhou J, Liang Y, Li W, Xiang S, Dai SY, Yuan JS. Electro-biodiesel Empowered by Co-Design of Microorganism and Electrocatalysis. Joule doi: 10.1016/j.joule.2024.10.001

Comments

Davemart

Sounds bloody marvellous on the face of it.

Anyone got a good enough handle on the technology to know where the potential 'gotchas' are?

mahonj

Hi Dave, sounds great, but I can think of two possible issues:
a; Where do you get the CO2 - do you take it from the air, or from the flue gas from a power station or some other source - does it have to be concentrated or can we just use air?

b: They use a bacterium (Rhodococcus jostiii), sometimes bacteria can get infected with other bacteria and this messes up the process, also, they can be expensive.

Anyway, brilliant if it works out, or leads to something that does.
Here's hoping.

Roger Brown

From the introduction the Joule paper (https://www.cell.com/joule/abstract/S2542-4351(24)00434-3?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS2542435124004343%3Fshowall%3Dtrue) on this subject:

" Herein, we developed a new electro-biodiesel concept to manufacture diesel from CO2 by integrating electrocatalytic CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR) to produce biocompatible C2+ intermediates, with subsequent microbial conversion of these intermediates into lipids as biodiesel feedstock. This new concept can be broadly applied to the circular economy for manufacturing emission-negative fuels, chemicals, materials, and food ingredients at a much higher efficiency than photosynthesis and lower carbon emissions than petrochemicals.

If you are going to burn the biodiesel in conventional applications and release the CO2 to the atmosphere then circularity requires that the CO2 should come from the atmosphere in the first place. Thus you need either bio-capture via plants or DAC. If you are going to use bio-capture (with presumably some preliminary use of the bio mass for energy production), then you have to account for the land use for this part of the production process. DAC still has serious economic problems including large energy requirements to separate the CO2 from the energy well into which it drops during the capture process.

mahonj

You could say that it doesn't matter where the CO2 comes from and thus run it on flue gases or the waste of various industrial processed (cement making for instance).
This would give a reasonably concentrated co2 source which should be easy to handle.
You could argue that these sources shouldn't be there in the first place, but they are, and you may as well use them.

SJC

Get your carbon dioxide from power plants they produce tons of it every second, then get renewable hydrogen, using gas to liquids process that's been around for decades make jet fuel and diesel.

Roger Pham

@Roger Brown,
In the Mid-west, USA, there is plenty of sunshine and plenty of wind, but it costs too much to build power lines to major population center. There is a lot of farm-waste biomass there that can be fermented into ethanol with CO2 as by-product, and this CO2 could be combined with solar and wind electricity to make synthetic fuel to recycle this CO2 waste.
This is a sustainable practice because there is 1 Billion tons of waste biomass in the USA annually alone that can be converted to biofuel, with the CO2 as byproduct of this conversion, that can be further re-processed into synthetic fuel. No need to obtain the CO2 from the air as yet. All the living plants can remove the CO2 from the air for free, without any investment into CO2 from air facilities necessary as yet.

Roger Brown

@Roger Phan,

I am not sure how much biomass waste will be produced in an agricultural system with long term ecological resilience (see for instance https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/time-to-rethink-corn/), but such as will exist is indeed good candidate material for co-production of fuel and fertilizer. If CO2 emissions from this process can be economically captured and reused I am all for it.

Roger Brown

One further concern about this process is extent to which phosphorous inputs are needed. Any new big demand on phosphorus is, in my mind, a significant concern.

SJC

Roger Pham has it right about biomass, it's exactly the kind of cycle we need to do.

Roger Pham

@Roger Brown,
Good point about the phophorus and other minerals like potassium, etc... that are being depleted by growing crops. These minerals should be recycled by collecting them from the residue of waste biomass conversion to fuel process, then these mineral residues should be incorporated into the fertilizers. There should be laws to ensure that these vital micro plant nutrients are to be recycled.

SJC

Weather it's power plant carbon or bio carbon along with renewable hydrogen, this is the way to synthetic fuels. Don't use fossil fuels. When we reuse carbon we reduce carbon emissions, it's a concept that's easy to understand.

The comments to this entry are closed.