Wow. That is an interesting patent. Keep in mind here that this is primarily a biochemistry topic and my training is NOT in biochem.
Regular photsynthesis takes CO2 and water and light to synthesize sugars and poly-sugars (cellulose) to make plants grow.
Their patent claims that they can engineer microbes that will take CO2 and water and light and synthesize whatever they want them to. The microbe thing is “magic” to me, so I can’t say whether they can or not. But look at common yeast that can produce ethanol from sugar. Magic. It would be quite difficult do do that reaction without the biochem reactor that is the yeast.
The patent includes a very LONG list of possible end products that these microbes might produce. This may be just a patent thing to make their claims as broad as possible. It’s not clear that they have demonstrated the ability to produce any or all of these products.
They’re also claiming a microbe process to produce sugars (just like photosynthesis) and then a photo-fermentation process - probably a lot like the yeast thing - to produce ethanol.
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Accordingly, the invention provides cells which produce metabolic sugars, e.g., glucose, through photosynthesis using light, water and CO 2 , subsequently converting the sugars into carbon-based products of interest in an efficient, sustainable yield.
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They mention ethanol a lot, so this may be the most likely product from their engineered microbes. Still a good deal if the only inputs are CO2, light, and water.
On the water thing... they only mention water a few times in the patent. Thing is, in order to make a hydrocarbon, you need both hydro(gen) and carbon. Water is the easiest source of hydrogen and is what is used in regular photosynthesis.
I’m thinking that the ethanol produced here will ‘still’ require distillation, so that will require some energy. The key here is to produce more chemical energy in the ethanol than the heat energy required to distill the ethanol.
Bottom line, it depends on their ability to mess with these microbes enough to get the products that they want. Sadly, that is beyond my ability to judge.
Still, an interesting idea. Ethanol is C2H6O, so three molecules of water are required for each molecule of CO2. Oxygen may be a by-product of the reaction.
That patent is amazing, huh? I don’t think I’ve seen one that length or detail before. The growth medium for the microbes includes water, too. They also mention required nutrients (eg, vitamin B12) to get the bugs to grow, but they mention that it is not possible to produce the necessary vitamins at the scale needed.
Their systems patent had quite a few designs for bioreactors with feedstock, heat, flowrate information, fractionators, etc. The gaseous feedstock included (IIRC) about 6% water together with a lot of N2.