Energy biotechnology in 2013: advanced technology development for breakthroughs in fuels and chemicals production.

摘要

Transportation is nearly completely dependent on liquid fuels, a natural consequence of the extraordinary volumetric and gravimetric energy density of liquid hydrocarbons. While some fraction of transportation will inevitably be electrified in the near future, the energy requirements of, for example, line-haul trucking are such that storage is actually prohibitive. Accordingly, no plausible suggestions for the electrification of flight exist. To displace legacy fossil fuels, high-efficiency, high throughput approaches that facilitate the storage and utilization of solar energy in carbon bonds are urgently required. Current approaches involve the use of natural photosynthesis to produce sugars — either starch or lignocellulose — and lipids that are then converted to liquid fuels through a variety of both biological and abiological approaches. Such approaches are necessarily limited by the efficiency of photosynthesis, and that efficiency is low. Although the theoretical limits to the efficiency of photosynthesis are near 5%, practically achievable efficiencies of terrestrial plants are well below 1%. At currently existing technology, such values are insufficient to enable large-scale displacement of liquid fossil fuels without significant disruptions to agriculture. Hence, a variety of advanced technology developments is urgently needed.