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Bacteria that can convert electricity into methane could help solve one of the biggest problems with renewable energy – its unreliability compared to the steady output of polluting fossil-fuel power stations.
Bacterium eats electricity, farts biogas
Seeded on Sun Apr 5, 2009 1:04 PM EDT
Article Source: The New Scientist- Enjoy this article? Help vote it up the 'Vine.
- Public Discussion (4)
Logan is optimistic about the method's potential: "Commercial applications could be just a few years down the road," he says.
This phrase should be banned from all journalism works other than those directly labeled as a marketing endeavor of some sort.
- 6 votes
#1 - Sun Apr 5, 2009 1:07 PM EDTAmusing concept. Doesn't appear to be much beyond the gee-whiz phase at the moment.
Everyone talks about the wonders of methane but few seem to recognize that it is not an easy gas to store or transport as it liquifies at such a low temp. So there might be some value in local generation, less so when transport is involved.
- 5 votes
#2 - Sun Apr 5, 2009 1:55 PM EDTYou are absolutely correct about the lack of common knowledge about methane handling. Don't people wonder why its typically burned-off as waste at oil platforms?
- 5 votes
I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand. In our region much of the winter heating is methane. There is some storage capcity in the network. The electric is designed for peak summertime air conditioning use. Also even in winter there is less electic usage at night when it happens to be colder. But you tend to keep the coal unit turning over because of stop/start effeicecy.
If they can get this to work at scale it could be a way of "peak shaving" winter natural gas use. The price of natural gas would be limited to the price of coal/nuclear/wind/solar plus the conversion equipment plus the 20% loss minus the interstate shipping costs.
- 3 votes
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