How can we get energy from microbes?
Here is a picture to illustrate just one possible scenario. Engineered microbes such as cyanobacteria or unicellular eukaryotic green-algae are grown in a photobioreactor consisting of closed, parallel transparent tubes. The medium in which they live is kept in circulation and hydrogen gas is harvested from the ends of the tubes. The hydrogen can be used on site, stored, or transported for use elsewhere.
This setup requires contributions from several disciplines and the answers to many questions:
- Biology - What kinds of organisms do we use? How do we modify them to increase production of hydrogen or other products?
- Process engineering - How do we design photobioreactors to best capture sunlight and emitted gases? How do we achieve mixing without using too much energy?
- Business - What biological energy based products are closest to competing, economically, with their non-biological counterparts? What kinds of products could be created to satisfy existing needs for energy production or reduction in carbon emissions?
- Government policy - How and where do we find the funding for the development of these technologies? what kind of regulation will encourage the development of biological energy?