Bacteria as Rocket Fuel May Soon Open the Door for More Affordable and Eco-Friendly Space Travel
“This biosynthetic pathway provides a clean route to highly energy-dense fuels that, prior to this work, could only be produced from petroleum using a highly toxic synthesis process,” said project leader Jay Keasling, a synthetic biology pioneer and CEO of the Department of Energy’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI). “As these fuels would be produced from bacteria fed with plant matter – which is made from carbon dioxide pulled from the atmosphere – burning them in engines will significantly reduce the amount of added greenhouse gas relative to any fuel generated from petroleum.”
Biofuels have gained enormous popularity as the world shifts to cleaner and more sustainable energy. They are used for transportation, cooking, charging electronic devices and equipment, power and heat generation, and other purposes.
However, in this latest study, the fuel comes from antifungal molecules produced by Streptomyces bacteria — powerful enough to fly a rocket to the moon and beyond!
What is more, it emits lesser greenhouse gases compared to today’s rocket fuels, which are made from highly toxic and combustible chemicals.
The molecules are called “polycylcopropanated fatty acid methyl esters,” or POP-FAMEs. Among their properties are triangle-shaped, triple-carbon rings that produce high-potential combustion power. Moreover, these fuel molecules are capable of compressing into a small volume, which is perfect for spacecraft.
Streptomyces bacteria are difficult to grow in the lab, but the researchers were able to find a more cooperative strain, which they used for experimentation.
“The resulting fatty acids contain up to seven cyclopropane rings chained on a carbon backbone, earning them the name fuelimycins,” according to the Berkeley Lab press release. “In a process similar to biodiesel production, these molecules require only one additional chemical processing step before they can serve as a fuel.”
The next step will be to produce at least 10 kilograms of this biofuel for combustion testing. But, at the moment, the researchers are perfecting the formula for POP-FAMEs to level up production efficiency.
The team is confident that POP-FAMEs can produce energy density values of more 50 megajoules per liter after chemical processing based on simulation data. That is very significant compared to gasoline (32 megajoules per liter) and kerosene-based rocket fuel RP-1 (35 megajoules per liter).
