Transportation Fuels

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) is genetically engineering a bacterium called Methylococcus in order to produce an enzyme that binds methane with a common fuel precursor to create a liquid fuel. This process relies on methylation, a reaction that requires no oxygen or energy inputs but has never been applied to methane conversion.” First, LBNL will construct a unique enzyme called a “PEP methylase” from an existing enzyme. The team will then bioengineer new metabolic pathways for assimilating methane and conversion to liquid fuels.

Calysta Energy will develop a new bioreactor technology to enable the efficient biological conversion of methane into liquid fuels. While reasonably efficient, Gas-to-liquid (GTL) conversion is difficult to accomplish without costly and complex infrastructure. Biocatalysts are anticipated to reduce the cost of GTL conversion. Calysta will address this by using computational fluid dynamics to model best existing high mass transfer bioreactor designs and overcome existing limitations.

Coskata is engineering methanol fermentation into an anaerobic microorganism to enable a low-cost biological approach for liquid fuel production. Currently, the most well-known processes available to convert methane into fuel are expensive and energy-intensive. Coskata is constructing strains of the anaerobic bacteria to efficiently and cost-effectively convert activated methane to butanol, an alcohol that can be used directly as part of a fuel blend.

The Bioinformatics and Metabolic Engineering Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) led by Prof. Greg Stephanopoulos will develop a comprehensive process to directly convert methane into a usable transportation fuel in a single step. MIT's unique technologies integrate methane activation with fuel synthesis, two distinct processes required to convert methane that are typically performed separately. Today, activating methane prior to converting it to useful fuel is a high-temperature, energy-intensive process.

The University of Delaware (UD) is engineering new metabolic pathways to convert methane into liquid fuel. UD’s technology targets high-efficiency activation of methane to methanol without the consumption of additional energy, followed by conversion to butanol. The two-stage technology is envisioned to recapture carbon dioxide —with no carbon dioxide emissions. The team will use metabolic engineering and synthetic biology techniques to enable methanol utilization in organisms that are not natively about to do so.

Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) is engineering a type of bacteria known as Methanosarcina acetivorans to produce acetate from methane gas. Current approaches to methane conversion are energy-intensive and result in substantial waste of carbon dioxide. Penn State will engineer a pathway for converting methane to a chemical called acetate by reversing the natural pathway for acetate to methanol conversion.

The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) will develop a high-efficiency, synthetic metabolic pathway that transforms methanol into n-butanol, a liquid fuel that can be used as a direct substitute for gasoline due to its high energy density. In nature, the process by which organisms that feed on methane convert it into fuel is inefficient, resulting in a substantial loss of carbon in the process.

The University of California, Davis (UC Davis) will engineer new biological pathways for bacteria to convert ethylene to a liquid fuel. Currently, ethylene is readily available and used by the chemicals and plastics industries to produce a wide range of useful products, but it cannot be cost-effectively converted to a liquid fuel like butanol, an alcohol that can be used directly as part of a fuel blend. UC Davis is addressing this problem with synthetic biology and protein engineering.

The team from Arzeda will use computational enzyme design tools and their knowledge of biological engineering and chemistry to create new synthetic enzymes to activate methane. Organisms that are capable of using methane as an energy and carbon source are typically difficult to engineer. To address this challenge, Arzeda will develop technologies essential to creating modular enzymes that can be used in other organisms.

MOgene Green Chemicals will engineer a photosynthetic organism for methane conversion that can use energy from both methane and sunlight. The first step in aerobic biological activation of methane requires oxygen and the introduction of energy in the form of heat. Organisms that use methane typically do so through a process that creates carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, losing energy-rich carbon molecules in the process. To address this, MOgene will engineer a “phototrophic” organism to convert methane that is capable of deriving additional energy from sunlight.