Artificial photosynthesis to boost biofuel generation

The project will investigate ways to harness the excess light energy that reaches phototrophic organisms (certain algae and plants) but cannot be used due to bottlenecks in natural photosynthesis.

‘A simple analogy is a power plant unconnected to the distribution grid,’ said project partner Prof Anne Jones of Arizona State University. ‘Unconnected, excess energy goes to waste and this is what currently happens in photosynthetic organisms when they are overwhelmed with light.’

Part of the project will aim to couple the photosynthetic apparatus in one bacterial species to the fuel-producing metabolism of a second species then funnel energy directly into fuel production. This is what the UK side of the project will focus on, as Prof Lee Cronin, from Glasgow University, told The Engineer.

‘We have to do engineering at the cellular level to get these bugs to talk to each other — plug them into each other to get energy transfer. Then we have to engineer their relative organisation next to each other and upscale it into a flow system and a bioreactor,’ he said.