The Energy Holy Grail 12.0: Is Our Quest At Its End?

I’ve been working with new energy inventions and their creators for almost 15 years now.  I don’t know how many times I’ve heard a new technology described as “the Holy Grail”:  solving all of the world’s problems forever.

Well, here’s the newest one using the Holy Grail cliche: a supposedly carbon-neutral method of using microbes to convert electricity into natural gas.

Thanks to an article written by Brita Belli of Ecomagination at GE (NYSE: GE), I was pointed to the recently-reported work of a team of researchers led by Alfred Spormann at Stanford University and Bruce Logan of Penn State University.  These researchers have determined that an organism called Methanobacterium palustre, when submerged in water on an electrically-charged cathode, will produce methane (i.e., natural gas, CH4) — supposedly at an 80% efficiency rate.

The carbon-neutrality of this approach stems from (1) using surplus electricity generation from non-emitting wind or solar and (2) the microbe extracts the carbon atom for the methane from the CO2 in the atmosphere.

So, in theory, one can make an infinite supply of a relatively clean fossil-fuel from renewable electricity by sucking carbon out of the air.  And, given the extensive natural gas pipeline, storage and distribution network, this fuel could be used for baseload power generation, traditional space/water heating and cooking purposes, and even transportation (e.g., natural gas vehicles).

The catch:  as is often the case with early discoveries in university labs, the researchers don’t know how to scale the technology and achieve consistent/stable results at commercially-useful levels.  The economics are also highly uncertain.

Don’t hold your breath.  This type of invention could take a very very long time to turn into something that’s viable for the energy marketplace.  As a long-time executive from one of the supermajors once said to me, it takes 12-24 months to really prove something at the next order of magnitude — and in energy, it’s usually several orders of magnitudes of expansion from the laboratory to the field.  Thus, what seems like an overnight success story usually has a decade or more of development behind it.

So, while this discovery might turn out to be the Holy Grail — and it definitely seems worth monitoring — one should not get too excited just yet.  There are a lot of potential hurdles to be overcome, and some of them may not be surmounted.  Even if the technology develops favorably, it’s a long way from being ready for prime-time.

In the meantime, this is the only Holy Grail to which I will pay attention.

cleantechblog.com

6 Comments on "The Energy Holy Grail 12.0: Is Our Quest At Its End?"

Beery on Sun, 16th Sep 2012 1:54 pm 



“…the researchers don’t know how to scale the technology and achieve consistent/stable results at commercially-useful levels. The economics are also highly uncertain.”

In other words, in the extremely unlikely event that it does work on a useful scale, it’s probably an energy sink.

BillT on Sun, 16th Sep 2012 3:29 pm 



EROEI! Doesn’t anyone out there understand that simple FACT? It has nothing to do with money or desire.

autonomous on Sun, 16th Sep 2012 5:43 pm 



Production of methane gas this way is a very complex process requiring a “microbial zoo” in order to maintain a balance of gasses in solution. Even relatively simple lead-acid battery chemistry is not fully understood, so this process could take years to become commercially viable.

DC on Sun, 16th Sep 2012 7:10 pm 



You know, if its gas you want, just throw all your organic waste into a digester, and you’ll get gas. Of course, no ‘tech’ required, the process is well understood and simple. Problem is of course, we as individuals dont generate enough organic waste to provide ourselves with the energy intense lifestyles weve come to expect, much less power society as a whole. Nor could we recoup the costs, or the space and time, energy devoted to setting up and maintaining a few hundred million personal digesters either. But of course, there is a deeper issue here. The un-stated idea behind all these corn-bio-fools or microbe bio-fools is all the same. Large, for profit corporations, will build complex and energy intensive infrastructure(always with staggering public subsidies) and then go on to subsidize both producers and consumers of these ‘new’ energy sources. We can see this very clearly now with ‘regular’ oil,@ 600billion + in annual global subsides, and its definately on display in the US corn-bio-fools scam. Or put another way, large corporations with complex technology that few understand will take ‘care’ of you. All ‘we’ need to do, is give them money and leave them in charge…again. IoW, remain passive ‘consumers’ as before, totally at the mercy of distant, faceless energy cartels. Whether its oil wars in far off lands to keep the oil under the cartels control, or building pond scum farms in distant deserts for trillions of dollars, the underlying idea is the same. Corporate control remains.

All these articles, no matter what they discuss, or propose, all suffer from the same problem. Its not about producing more energy, but about ‘us’ having to use a lot less of it. Some articles do address this key point, but even then, its usually an afterthought. The old elephant in the room problem. So it does not matter what your favourite energy scheme is, be is nuclear, wind, ‘clean coal’ hahah, corn bio-fools …whatever. Long as were committed to keeping things exactly the way they are now, and have been for the last few decades, none of these schemes will ever work, even the proven and more benign ones, like wind and solar.

Microbes will never power your gas-powered trash-bin or disney-world.

BillT on Mon, 17th Sep 2012 12:12 am 



Maybe it’s time we upgrade that ‘elephant’ to a dinosaur, a brontosaurus perhaps, as it is getting harder and harder to ignore the fact that our ‘non-negotiable’ life style is already contracting bit by bit and will also soon be too obvious to ignore.

Name on Mon, 17th Sep 2012 9:25 am 



Well, I seen suggested that the methane produced electric energy (80% eff) to be used for power generation (40% eff)… don’t know with what inventions the author worked, but that’s not a way to obtain surplus energy, by any elementary physics and common sense laws!