In this relatively low-tech biochemical process of recycling carbon from waste, any hydrogen molecules are readily freed and harvested for fuel as they circulate at the top of the process’s fermentation tanks. Dark bio-hydrogen demonstrates far more sustainability than the oil and gas industries “rainbow hydrogens”. In bio-manufacture, we like to call this dark bio-hydrogen byproduct our “over the rainbow product” because, on the one hand, it is a big win for environmental equality and on the other, it is especially positive for an emerging organic hydrogen fuel industry. Dark bio-hydrogen is produced as a byproduct of industrial scale deep-tech engineered, bio-manufacturing and when compared to the so-called renewable rainbow alternatives that consume unsustainable quantities of fresh water it has the potential to redefine how we will think of hydrogen for the future.
The biotech industry is rapidly expanding as the source of production of medicines, fuels, chemicals and materials, it is an industry reported likely to achieve a 30 trillion USD output by the end of this decade and by when it should already account for as much as a third of global production of fuels, chemicals and materials as bio-manufactured products replace petrochemical products. We will hear and see much more about dark bio-hydrogen soon as a bottom-up rather than a top-down solution, particularly since bio-manufacturing of Second Generation Ethanol [2G EtOH] is ramping up at pace on the global stage and scale ahead of more stringent mandatory blending regulations for Sustainable Aircraft Fuels [SAF].
As the bio-manufacturing industry tackles the mammoth demand for SAF together with other automotive 2G EtOH-based bio-fuels, the mass production of other consumer critical chemicals and materials is being pioneered through bio-manufacture and ramped up to an industrial scale. A typical example is the series of nature-like plastics fast becoming competitors to petrochemical plastics. Nature like plastics makes the idea of recyclable plastics redundant since waste plastic sources are almost exclusively only available as a commingled resource, for example, household and community waste are discarded mixed requiring complex, costly sorting processes which will always make recycling unlikely. In contrast, all bio-manufactured plastics decompose in a nature-like manner and since non-recyclable plastics commingled with other waste provide the ideal feedstock for hydrogen producers gas with which to feed the microbial fermentation process it is inevitable we will soon turn to produce new all bio-compatible and biodegradable plastics. So the future demise for oil-based plastics is set, hydrocarbon sourced plastic is in decline. Recyclable oil-based plastics were never more than a temporary fix for the environmentalists, bio-manufactured plastics perform equally or better than oil-based plastic and have a guaranteed end-of-life cycle either recycled or because they can be composted an environmentalist silver bullet.
TITAN and ASMARA hydrogen producer gas + microbial fermentation platforms enable industrial-scale manufacture of many different types of fuels, chemicals, materials and even pharmaceuticals on the same dark fermentation platform where the carbon is recycled from waste streams and where dark hydrogen is produced as a byproduct.
We have taken particular care to ensure both TITAN and ASMARA are forward compatible designed and built as “cookie cutter” platforms since they envisage dark fermentation for many more everyday products. In the future products like building insulation, car tyres, textiles, veneers and surfacing materials, composites and building components as well as most types of packaging which can all be manufactured through fermentation can be recycled or composted, whilst cleaning agents, personal care and hygiene products, along with many other chemicals created in symbiosis on microbial fermentation platforms along with recyclable and compostable materials will demonstrate almost negligible negative environmental impact. The bonus is that this industrialised, bottom-up holistic approach vastly increases the top-end availability of renewable hydrogen.
Bio-manufacture produces oil and gas replacement, including the downstream products at scale including all fuels, chemicals and materials that have been at one time or another almost exclusively produced by the petrochemical industry. Another truly value-added prospect of bio-manufacturing on a hydrogen producers gas + microbial fermentation platform is its potential to recycle harmful historic wastes including much of the 500 or so million tonnes of plastic waste dumped in our landfills and at sea over the last seven decades which otherwise would slowly poison our land, the air we breathe and the water we drink over a whole millennium. The recycling of waste carbon into new bio-manufactured products offers the lowest environmental impact, bio-manufactured materials are naturally bio-compostable without producing micro or nano plastics pollutants so recycling is addressed as a choice of economic efficiency not just one of conservation.
Bio-manufacturing replaces everyday downstream oil and gas products with microbial-grown products on an industrial scale and in many sectors which are currently more cost-competitive than petrochemical downstream products. Using digital tools scientists continue to genetically re-engineer all four types of microbes, Viruses, Bacteria, Archaea, Fungi & Protists [single cellular fungi that live in our soil] because all of these microbes can be genetically modified. Genetic modification of microbes “deep-tech” enables bio-manufacturing efficiency which often results in one or more product outcomes being fermented in one single process. Science now possesses the potential to devise and create completely new products even ones yet to be imagined. Biotechnology products today are manufactured to serve the whole spectrum of industries, replacements for traditional oil and gas products are available to a wide cross-section of industries and will be more commonly applied or deployed in the transport, energy, manufacturing, fashion, pharmaceutical, health care, agriculture as well as the food industry. Today the biotechnology industry is seriously ramping up production.
Fermentation and biotech pave the way for an environmental revolution and through industrial-scale bio-manufacturing
Late this past summer, on the eve of the 60th anniversary of the JF Kennedy classic moonshot speech, a pivotal moment in the history of the space program, when the USA was asked to rally behind a mission that was far from certain however delivered as promised a man on the moon before the end of the decade in 1969 President Joe Biden declared his moonshot. The race to cure cancer is on and on rallying the nation behind the emerging biotech and fast-emerging deep-tech, bio-manufacturing industry to deliver that cure. In signing the executive order on this anniversary the US Government launched a joint National Biotechnology and “Bio-manufacturing Initiative” to ensure that funding keeps the United States on the cutting edge of this science and to especially lead the revolution it can bring about. Besides finally engineering and mass manufacturing a cure for cancer the US will harness the full potential of producers gas bioengineering and CCT through microbial fermentation to deliver the best results for mass manufacturing renewable fuels, chemicals, pharmaceutical agents and materials. Such an initiative, at this time, no doubt, weighs in with a view of particularly ending the international and cross-border conflicts as a result of dependency on foreign oil and gas, and peace through the development of science.
Dark hydrogen is the new green, a waterless end-of-the-rainbow solution
Historically fermentation has played a critical part in assisting mankind to thrive e.g. food preservation in times of plenty for times of dearth. Understanding how microbes interact in symbiosis is both fundamental and critical in ensuring commercial circularity and efficiency in production with cost competitiveness. A simple example of symbiosis is the fermentation of milk into yoghurt. In the conversion of milk to yoghurt, Lactobacillus and Streptococcus two completely different microbes work together to help each other grow until they reach a balance effectively halting the milk’s food degeneration process by creating new food. In the case of milk fermentation, two bacteria in symbiosis transform the lactose in milk into lactic acid to create the longer-life dairy product we call yoghurt. This same lactic acid now plays a vital role in developing a post-pollution society plastic because it is also a vital building block for the production of materials.
Fermentation can be described as a process which helps break down large organic molecules via the action of micro-organisms into simpler organic molecules. For example in the case of the fermentation of beer the yeast enzymes convert sugars and starches into alcohol, while the proteins are converted to peptides and amino acids. Understanding symbiosis presents us with many opportunities, for example, converting a broth into alcohol produces ethanol and one which can be readily blended to displace combustion fuels like petrol and diesel. Meanwhile, lactic acid, for example, a vital building block, in another process can be used to create materials, including recyclable biodegradable containers in which to package yoghurt.
In manufacturing either ethanol or bioplastics products through dark fermentation, there is a bonus the value-added byproduct emission is hydrogen and given the scale of demand for new fuels, chemicals and materials significant hydrogen can be produced in future through bio-manufacturing without any unnecessary threat of exacerbating water scarcity or inducing environmental inequality.
Generally, although the growth of one bacteria through a fermentation process is usually at the cost of another, simply because one bacteria “ferment” thrives and others die [since one of the ferments is usually better at fighting for the available nutrients than another] there are notable exceptions [like in the case of yoghurt]. After many decades of research and development of microbial fermentation outcomes and their yields, we can see either the winning ferment or ferments decides the commercial outcome of the process and that outcome is measured in the type of product or the number of products produced at any one batch. So better understanding of the potential symbiosis of the four types of microbes Viruses, Bacteria, Archaea, Fungi & Protists makes it better for evolution, to that post-pollution world where mankind might one day align with nature itself instead of disrupting its circularity.
Dark hydrogen is a waterless byproduct of bio-manufacture where hydrogen molecules are given up in the making of better products
Development of the science of fermenting microbes over the last century has gone far beyond bread, yoghurt, beer and wine. It has also provided us with how to produce and mass manufacture drugs and medicines that we have needed to fight or avoid pandemics and protect public health. Bio-engineering of microbes deep-tech already plays a vital part in the development of new treatments for cancer and one day the microbes we engineer and manufacture to ensure our safe water supply could protect us from all manner of ailments and diseases including cancer. At a small scale microbial fermentation has helped us develop diverse, nature-like materials including biocompatible collagen for bone reconstruction and skin grafts, scaled the bio-manufacturing collagen process could provide leather for our cars and even our shoes. Producing collagen together with ethanol in one ferment at TITAN or ASMARA scaled-up could replace costly animal leather with a nature-like replica leather most indistinguishable from the leather we use today.
Scaled-up microbial fermentation can produce and displace all of the fuels, chemicals and materials we derive from oil and gas today. Oil is a resource we seldom use in its raw state instead, top-down, we refine oil and put those downstream chemicals to work for example as diesel or petrol fuels, ammonia fertilisers and lactic acids as the source for chemicals and long-chain polymers for plastics, to create any number of the valuable materials we take for granted in our daily lives.
Through hydrogen producer’s gas + microbial fermentation, we can reproduce all of these downstream oil and gas resources however better and with a guaranteed end-of-life solution since all of these materials are biodegradable. Plastics of the future, that naturally, compost make more sense than plastics that might just get recycled. Since we can’t always recycle the recyclables because they are commingled with other materials why not just recycle all of the commingled resources together reusing them for the carbon they contain? Recyclable plastic becomes folly when you consider the range of biodegradable plastics and their capacity to outperform petrochemical plastics offered by nature. Hydrogen producer’s gas + Microbial fermentation on one platform takes the recycling of carbon, to the next level, it is simple and convenient it recycles the problematic carbon we already have, no reason to dig more up.
Looking upstream but starting downstream, dark fermentation can go a long way to meet green hydrogen demand
Microbial dark fermentation plays a critical role in the future biotech industry, carried out at scale it provides a significant industry which can end our dependency on oil and gas because even partially replacing the downstream products whose demand destabilises our society and threatens our existence means we get to live in a safer environment. To manufacture less harmful, next-generation nature-like fuels, chemicals and materials like petrol, diesel and jet fuels and ammonia, together with plastics and styrenes and a whole range of other downstream oil and gas products, we can manufacture locally without the exploration, exploitation or refinery emissions associated with oil and gas instead. Simply converting abundant and problematic carbon-rich waste streams and emissions using relatively low-tech proprietary bio-manufacturing systems we get to recycle the carbon that haunts us, we can halt global warming through challenging greenhouse gas emissions, and in achieving critical mass we produce all of the automotive bio-hydrogen we need for more zero transport emissions.
Coupled at an industrial scale hydrogen producer gas + microbial fermentation platforms already deliver second-generation ethanol at scale.
Second Generation Ethanol [2G EtOH] is already blended with automotive fuels under EU, the US and other mandates and higher levels of 2G EtOH critical to reducing emissions in the vehicles we use today are on the way. The fastest pathway to the decarbonisation of transport is to radically reduce emissions without embedding more carbon in new vehicles. 2G EtOH has zero refinery footprint and when compressed at an approximate 2:1 ratio in the Alcohol to Jet pathway [AtJ] SAF is created to displace the standard Jet Fuel we use today. SAF via the AtJ pathway offers a near-to-zero emission alternative compared to the full life cycle standard Jet-A1 fuel consumed by the aviation industry.
Critical to the development of microbial fermentation at scale has been the market availability of low-cost carbon, a problem now solved in a space readily filled by hydrogen gas producers which can convert carbon-rich solid waste to a carbo-hydrogen-rich gas. It is a solution ideally suited to dark fermentation since the whole conversion process takes place in a negative pressure vessel, so environmental emissions are avoided. Ethanol manufacture through microbial fermentation is one single product, however genetically engineered, once expired the microbes used to grow ethanol can become a valuable source of polymers. Today, although the process is completed in two separate ferments, an opportunity to exploit symbiosis exists since the spent cells of the most efficient microbes used to produce 2G EtOH readily provide the end-of-life starch required to process other microbes into valuable polymers.
Spent microbe cells as polymers can be used to manufacture a variety of plastics ones which can be rolled to produce films, extruded to produce profiles and containers or moulded to produce components. Microbial fermentation produces plastics which unlike their oil-based thermoplastic cousins are bio-compatible a discovery critical to recent breakthroughs for life-saving reconstructive surgery, however, one day, demonstrate an ideal platform on which to print organ replacements. Last but not least let’s not forget the byproduct of dark fermentation which is dark hydrogen, because the current scale of demand for fuels, chemicals and materials are extensive, enough to produce and replace much of the hydrogen we already produce whilst avoiding the production of hydrogen through the depletion of water resources.
Rainbow hydrogen fails to compare with the value proposition of dark hydrogen
Dark fermentation is the man-made chiral equivalent of our oxygen-rich atmosphere, where all around us plants and trees adsorb air from our atmosphere sinking the carbon in carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide into cellular growth whilst replenishing the air we breathe as they release oxygen an intermittent “light” process, one which is powered by photosynthesis. In the on-demand “dark” process microbes grow, multiply, grow and expire driven by natural fermentation, in the absence of free oxygen as large molecules are converted into smaller less complicated molecules the carbon from carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide are sunk into microbial growth, dissolving oxygen into alcohol [ethanol] ultimately releasing dark bio-hydrogen.
Bio-manufactured alternatives to harmful downstream oil and gas products like petrol, diesel and jet fuels offer significant decarbonised replacements they provide the foundation stones for a new reality, the post-pollution era where we simply recycle the harmful emissions from our atmosphere, and we recycle the waste we produce along with the waste we already made and discarded back into more useful, less harmful products through an on-demand, natural microbial fermentation. Microbial fermentation is already at work lowering iron and steel and other heavy industrial emissions, converting the harmful carbon output of industrial emissions into new products through CCT a process already practised for more than a decade. Whilst the pairing of hydrogen producer’s gas + microbial fermentation on one platform is a relatively newer concept and with the first dozen or so industrial-scale plants being commissioned or on the way today it gives us insight into how we might solve a low-cost carbon feedstock problem whilst also providing an end of life solution for a significant part of societies global waste problem.
Technologies advance practice change, carbon capture & storage already fell by the wayside, carbon capture and transformation has taken its place
The post-pollution era quite rightly assumes we have enough carbon in our atmosphere already, in future it envisages converting all of the waste carbon we already have in the air on our land and in our seas into new products whilst lobbying to leave much of the rest of the earth hydrocarbons in the ground forevermore. Carbon recycling dislodged the mythical benefits of carbon capture and storage without recycling. The idea of sinking carbon into caverns deep underground is at best temporary, it raises a rhetorical question why store carbon if you can recycle it to avoid digging up more hydrocarbons? Sinking gas into caverns is a process the oil and gas industry is well familiar with since it is a process used to displace and acquire more hydrocarbons, no wonder they actively promote it.
Since there is enough waste carbon on our land, at sea, and in the air around us, recycling that carbon needs be the first order of the day.
More than 20% of oil is used to manufacture plastics the industry predicts it will rise to 30% in future this is where microbes can do a better job, bio-manufactured plastics are all recyclable and most importantly in any event they are compostable, whilst being biodegradable they are also biocompatible and are harmless posing little almost no threat to our environment. Bio-manufacturing of plastics on the TITAN and ASMARA hydrogen producer gas + microbial fermentation platform ASMARA not only presents the environmental solution for the waste we produce but also for the waste we have produced. Good forest practice calls for better forest management ensuring the forest thrives requires thinning a valuable carbon-rich feedstock a solid solution for scaled-up dark fermentation. At harvest, more than 70% of what is grown in the forest is waste, left in the forest after harvest it reduces the carbon account of the forest as it slowly decomposes. Increased forest cover and demand for forest products ensures our TITAN hydrogen producer gas + microbial fermentation platform is a fully sustainable industry for many decades to come
TITAN in the rural setting and ASMARA in the urban setting means producing and exporting products from the very source of the waste stream. TITAN and ASMARA are ends-of-carbon emission life cycle solutions for forest floor and municipal waste which are converted through hydrogen gas producers + microbial fermentation into valuable renewable fuels, chemicals and materials in a nature-like way with nature not against it, it also produces a green hydrogen without the need to exploit water resources.
Future growth in the petrochemical industry is particularly aligned with much more single-use plastics
Demand for plastics and even single-use plastics ever increases bio-manufacturing can meet this demand with very little new environmental impact, however, fuelled by the commingled carbon-rich waste we are currently stuck with it can achieve more than some carbon neutrality.
Such is the demand for microbial fermentation nature like fuel, chemical and material products sufficient green hydrogen can be produced to quickly satisfy all of the markets necessary needs for hydrogen consumption and for decades to come, hydrogen producers gas + microbial fermentation presents a combustion engine decarbonisation quick fix now to offset a future critical mass of alternative drive trains.
Whilst the mass by-production of dark hydrogen reduces the need to put further stress on freshwater a drought which already demonstrates to a challenge in many regions.
A thought might also be spared before inventing a myriad of possible other uses for dark hydrogen as is commonly touted by the “armchair rainbow hydrogenists”. Since our online society continues to believe in promoting one renewable energy source or another we need to remind ourselves that we cannot take endless bites of the same apple.
Let’s instead pause for a moment and consider green ammonia simply as a hydrogen fuel carrier, not as a fertiliser, and instead adopt regenerative farming techniques before the senseless way in which we deplete our land relying on someone else’s gas.
60 years on Joe Biden’s new moonshot is to cure cancer
Steve Walker.
Warsaw, October 10 2022