Carbon-neutral natural gas? A lab breakthrough but ...

A microbe can turn wind and solar electricity into natural gas while sucking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But it's commercial feasibility is not yet tested.

|
David Vincent/AP/File
This March file photo shows a general view of a Aliade 150 wind turbine, the largest in France, erected in Le Carnet. Stanford and Penn State university researchers have discovered a microbe that can turn electricity from renewable sources into methane, a type of natural gas.

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.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Carbon-neutral natural gas? A lab breakthrough but ...
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2012/0911/Carbon-neutral-natural-gas-A-lab-breakthrough-but
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe