Organization Columbia University
Website www.columbia.edu
Point of Contact Prof. Scott Banta

Reducing equivalent: Electrons (via Ammonia); Organism: N. europaea; Product: Butanol

This Columbia University project team will use the chemolithoautotrophic ammonia-oxidizing bacteria Nitrosomonas europaea to produce isobutanol from carbon dioxide. The team will genetically engineer the microorganism to demonstrate that they can efficiently use ammonia that can be generated electrochemically from nitrite, or supplied from waste water streams, to fix carbon dioxide.

Project Factsheet (PDF 319KB)

Electrofuels - Projects

• Columbia University: Biofuels from CO2 Using Ammonia-Oxidizing Bacteria in a Reverse Microbial Fuel Cell
• Ginkgo BioWorks: Engineering E. Coli as an Electrofuels Chassis for Isooctane Production
• Harvard Medical School- Wyss Institute: Engineering a Bacterial Reverse Fuel Cell
• Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: Development of an Integrated Microbial-ElectroCatalytic (MEC) System for Liquid Biofuel Production from CO2
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Bioprocess and Microbe Engineering for Total Carbon Utilization in Biofuel Production 
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Engineering Ralstonia eutropha for Production of Isobutanol (IBT) Motor Fuel from CO2, H, O2 
• Medical University of South Carolina: Electroalcoholgenesis- Bioelectrochemical Reduction of CO2 to Butanol 
• North Carolina State University: Hydrogen-Dependent Conversion of Carbon Dioxide To Liquid Electrofuels By Extremely Thermophilic Archaea 
• OPX Biotechnologies, Inc.: Novel Biological Conversion of Hydrogen and Carbon Dioxide Directly into Biodiesel
• Pennsylvania State University: Development of Rhodobacter as a Versatile Platform for Fuels Production
• Regents of the University of California, Los Angeles: Electro-Autotrophic Synthesis of Higher Alcohols
• The Ohio State University: Bioconversion of Carbon Dioxide to Biofuels by Facultatively Autotrophic Hydrogen Bacteria
• University of Massachusetts Amherst: Electrofuels via Direct Electron Transfer from Electrodes to Microbes