Cyanobacteria: The Next Big Biofuel?

August 26th, 2008 by Ariel Schwartz

Could cyanobacteria eventually become a more popular biofuel than corn, sugarcane, or even algae? Quite possibly. According to Science Daily, cyanobacteria can convert up to 10 percent of the sun’s energy into biomass.

This is a drastic improvement over the 1 percent rate of crops like corn and sugarcane, as well as the 5 percent rate of algae. With such a high conversion rate, cyanobacteria could replace a hefty amount of fossil fuels without taking up too much land.

At a recent conference organized by the European Science Foundation (ESF), participants discussed how photosynthesis evolved by cyanobacteria produced our current fossil fuel supply. Now the objective is to use those same reactions to produce more fuel—without taking fossil fuels out of the ground.

These reactions could theoretically be created with an artificial leaf system consisting of self-assembling nanodevices that regenerate themselves much like real plants and cyanobacteria do.

But we won’t see such a system on the market anytime soon— the technology will be in development for another 10 to 20 years. In the meantime, however, algae appears to be the most promising biofuel contender.

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