Extremophile bacteria 10,000 times better than agriculture?

[eclipse]

Hi all,
this 12 minute TED talk makes BIG claims:

• Bacteria can grow in the dark allowing vertical farming
• They can replace bread and steaks: carbs and proteins
• They can grow oils and many industrial products

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQVdJjToMYk

What feedstocks are required? What am I missing?

[Engineer-Poet]

Microorganisms which grow in the dark are obviously heterotrophs.  They must be fed on something else, either autotrophs (photosynthesizers) or chemical feedstocks like volcanic H2S or fossil methane.

People who buy this snake-oil stuff need to realize that Barnum was an optimist.

[Roger Clifton]

The Ecomodernists would need something like this as a food source in their self-contained cities. Isaac Asimov explored the idea of cities fed on yeast. With only electricity as energy source, a variation of the proton pump might be engineered to directly convert current into biochemicals, but in its absence, an intermediate such as methanol might be sufficient.

[jimbaerg]

bravenewclimate.com/2013/01/16/zero-emission-synfuel-from-seawater/

mentions a means of making a mix of CO2 & H2 as an essential part of making the synfuel.

If that gas mix can be made cheaply, perhaps it could be the main feedstock for the microbes to make food.

[Roger Clifton]

Jim, it would be interesting to read of a metabolic pathway from H2 and CO2 to sugars, say. It might be possible to tweak some botanical biochem to do it. Did you have something in mind?

[Engineer-Poet]

There was recurrent discussion of a syngas-fed fermentation process on Green Car Congress some time ago, where the bugs ate both hydrogen and CO if I'm not mistaken.  Maybe dig there?

[jimbaerg]

www.kiverdi.com/
Is the website of the company that is researching this.

[Roger Clifton]

Aug 1, 2016 13:27:05 GMT 9.5 Engineer-Poet said:

Microorganisms which grow in the dark ... must be fed on something else .... or chemical feedstocks like volcanic H2S or fossil methane

Can we create food for microbes using just electricity and CO2 ? It seems that we can. This paper describes efficient electro-catalytic production of ethylene from CO2. The double bond in ethylene makes for easy production of ethanol and other C2 chemicals, surely some of which must be satisfactory as a base to the food chain.

[huon]

Another pathway, which builds upon "zero-emissions synfuel from seawater": nuclear > methanol > high-protein bacteria. skirsch.com/politics/globalwarming/tarsands.htm

"The resulting fuel is really clean...and the whole thing is carbon neutral and cheaper than gas is today. If you produce methanol instead of gasoline and run that in a methanol fuel cell in a hybrid electric vehicle, it is very economical compared to gasoline (about half the cost). Producing methanol from this process is cheaper and easier than producing gasoline or diesel fuel...."

"The bacteria Methylophilus Methylotrophus has been shown to grow extremely well on methanol and has been proven to be a very useful protein rich animal feed supplement broadly comparable or superior to Soybean meal."