
Solar Foods closes Series A financing for its first commercial factory - htnsao
https://solarfoods.fi/our-news/solar-foods-closes-series-a-financing-for-its-first-commercial-factory/
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rsynnott
> Solar Foods is the first company capable of producing food by using air-
> captured CO2 in a complete and continuous mode

Except for anyone who has ever grown a plant.

(This is potentially quite impressive, of course, but I do think that
characterising it as "this is the first time anyone has made food with CO2 and
the sun" is quite funny.)

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eloff
This seems like potentially the beginning of the biggest change to human food
production since agriculture.

It's early days, but being able to produce food via industrial process is far
more amenable to scaling and more predictable than agriculture under the open
sky. I imagine it would also be possible to shorten supply chains buy
producing the basic feedstock closer to where you produce the consumer food
product. That's good for the environment and for food security.

One could picture a future earth where most of the open space is preserved for
the wild, and us humans live in and around our cities. Wouldn't that be a nice
change from the way we're currently destroying our only home.

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OneGuy123
This will be garbage food, it's arrogant to believe you can add "some of this
and some of that" and that it will be a good food source for humans.

If you just a bit of too much or too little of something you will create a
nutritionally deficient human.

All of these "artifical foods" are garbage, these "scientists" don't
understand that real food is such a complicated blend of so many different
things that you cannot just recreate it from some base building blocks like
proteins, vitamins etc..

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profofofo
Yeah, it’s bemusing to see people calling a _single protein_ “food” instead of
the glorified protein supplement it is.

At best, it would become an alternative to existing protein powders made from
milk or plant crops, assuming the amino acid profile is good and it doesn’t
cause allergies/reactions in some people.

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imtringued
I agree. This is just an alternative to isolating proteins. Maybe its better.
Maybe its worse. For me it doesnt matter because eating two small rolls of
Harzer Käse already gives me 30g of proteins. No need to supplement anything
if you eat the right food.

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NortySpock
I'm pretty excited about Solar Foods; since it's "just" an industrial-grade
biological process, you could set it up in any suitable industrial facility.

My hope is that this would let us disconnect nutrition from crop-failure-due-
to-weather (well, normal weather like drought or unseasonal rains) and (maybe)
become post-scarcity with respect to nutrition. Just as solar, wind and
batteries allow us to create reliable electricity sustainably and reduces
energy prices, I hope this technology allows us to reduce the risk of famine
and reduce the base cost of a (healthy) calorie.

Plus in theory this could be used to support space colonies, which I think
would be a nice addition to humanity's skillset.

Another competitor in this space is the California-based company Air Protein.

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rsynnott
There are also huge potential advantages to this sort of approach in terms of
food safety and pollution. If it works, of course.

I wonder how tolerant it is of unreliable power; it could be an interesting
way to soak up the 'spare' power often produced by large renewable
deployments.

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sacred_numbers
The electricity in the process is primarily used to generate hydrogen, which
is what actually feeds the yeast cells. Even a fairly small buffer tank would
allow for continuous production with unreliable power. My guess is that food
production can also be slowed down if hydrogen production slows down.

Storing hydrogen as food is fantastic, since food can be stored much less
expensively than gaseous or liquid hydrogen and for much longer periods of
time.

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ipsum2
Yeast (biology in general) require specific temperatures and timings. I doubt
you could scale the energy usage up and down like a cloud instance.

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JoeAltmaier
Significant: protein created at the point of use. Circumvents the entire
agriculture infrastructure, plus shipping, refrigeration and storage. Just
make protein as your process requires it! Worthwhile for some products. Even
if it is expensive, those cost savings are in its favor.

What next? Sugars? Oils? Fats?

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sweetheart
Any company that is aiming to help folks rely less on animals for proteins
excites me. Love to see stuff like this continue to normalize proteins that
don't involve the mass torture and slaughter of animals.

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rladd
Don't fall for the marketing. It's nothing special, just bacteria:
[https://www.foodandwine.com/news/solein-carbon-dioxide-
food](https://www.foodandwine.com/news/solein-carbon-dioxide-food)

Basically every plant is making "protein out of thin air". Most of the carbon
in plants is from atmospheric CO2. And if you use electric lighting, it's "CO2
and electricity".

This is just marketing, plain and simple.

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tomcam
Sure but who doesn’t look forward to a giant bowl of their “novel platform
ingredient”, a catchphrase worthy of a Super Bowl commercial?

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shafyy
While interesting, the only long-term sensible solution to feed a growing
population is getting rid of livestock agriculture and create foods from
plants directly.

Yes, we could use foods produced using proteins from companies like Solar
Foods - but it's not necessary if we don't use 90% of our soybean production
to feed animals.

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rsynnott
While losing the animals would probably be pretty beneficial, the crops are
also not without sin; they use a huge amount of land and are vulnerable to
climate change. "Most/all food is produced in, effectively, chemical
factories" is an interesting vision of the future; it would potentially do
great things for food security and allow the rewilding of much of the planet.

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shafyy
Most of the agriculture land (77%) is used for crops that are fed to livestock
[0].

However, I agree that something like you described would also be great. I'm
unsure if it's necessary though, because going down that road will require a
lot capital and human resources. Could we use that for something more needed?

0: [https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-
food](https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food)

Edit: Added source.

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smaddox
What's the break down of average human caloric intake from animals vs. plants?
Is calories from animals close to the same fraction (77%)? If so, then
changing from animal to plant diet wouldn't reduce the land requirements much.

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hinkley
I don't have those answers, but it's been widely reported that the carbon
footprint of a calorie of chicken is about one quarter the footprint of a
calorie of beef.

Just switching animal proteins is a big change. And chickens are omnivores.
Feeding them invertebrates instead of feed corn would be a more natural diet
for them, and you can use food no longer fit for humans as the feedstock for
those invertebrates without switching humans to cricket flour.

I know of a guy who uses cows, pigs, and chickens to control pathogen load on
his farm. The lifecycle of flies on cow manure are very predictable, and with
some discipline you can use it as feedstock for the chickens. We know how to
do this outside, I doubt they know how to do it in a feed lot (although,
making it work in a feedlot would necessarily result in better sanitation for
the cows/pigs, since you'd have to isolate their waste chronologically).

Part of pathogen control is sending your inputs through as many diverse
digestive tracts as you can. Or using a ton of chemicals.
Mammal->insect->chicken->human is pretty good for eliminating parasites,
though maybe not salmonella.

[ETA] Most of what I said about chicken feed is also true of pigs, although
their footprint is somewhere between the two extremes.

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Robotbeat
But where do the invertibrates get THEIR food from? Feed corn is super cheap
per calorie (people sometimes burn feedcorn in stoves for heat), so it’s
probably what you’d feed the invertebrates.

Edit: Yup, insect farms typically use grains as the feed. Grains which you
could eat directly (after baking or cooking, of course) which would be more
calorically efficient.
[https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/09/americas-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/09/americas-
cricket-farmers/406843/)

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hinkley
I can't deny that feed corn has good shelf life (they store it outside under a
tarp when the silos are full). But there are other food streams that don't
necessarily pass inspection, especially for perishable foods.

I know from a couple days at a food bank that cows can eat pretty bad apples,
but there are badness levels that would be much safer for grubs or larvae to
eat.

Feed corn takes a lot of water though, and I don't know how much longer we'll
have that.

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nkingsy
Couldn’t find a breakdown of the science or nutritional profile on their site
other than “sorta like yeast”. Is their tech secret?

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htnsao
They are using Knallgas bacteria. Here's a study that the CEO was part of:

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221191241...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221191241830141X)

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Robotbeat
What’s the conversion efficiency, ie kCal of food per kWh of electricity?

(This can, of course, be expressed as a dimensionless number since both
numerator and denominator are in units of energy.)

Also, how does this efficiency compare in absolute, quantitative terms to
competing solutions like Calysta FeedKind?

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Crye
The word you're looking for I believe is efficacy.

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Robotbeat
No, it’s conversion efficiency. One energy form to another.

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macintux
The typo in the headline (“it’s”) is apparently due to the HN submission, not
the original PR.

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raverbashing
Yes, a Finn usually wouldn't make that kind of typo (or, you know, they would
just copy the original headline)

But a feature to bring the <title> from the site upon URL submission would be
useful.

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htnsao
oops, fixed. Yes I originally copied the title then decided all caps was
probably too much for HN.

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tomp
_> producing a unique single-cell protein out of thin air_

Who _writes_ these press releases? "single-cell protein" really?!?

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ticmasta
what about the "thin air" part? Does this imply they can only grow it at
extreme altitude?

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htnsao
They collect CO2 and water from air. The water is split via electrolysis to
get hydrogen for the knallgas bacteria to feed on along with the CO2, minerals
and ammonia. [1]

There is a path for the ammonia to be directly source from the air as well via
plasma nitrogen fixation. [2]

[1] [https://youtu.be/z8zuqR95fqA](https://youtu.be/z8zuqR95fqA)

[2]
[https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4344/10/2/152/htm](https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4344/10/2/152/htm)

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throw7
Sounds like Tasty Wheat... "everything the body needs".

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cooljacob204
Anyone else finding the stretched font extremely hard to read?

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PretzelPirate
Will this be useful when we go to Mars?

