The other way around would also be nice: Eats biogas, farts electricity. But for that, we already have fuel cells.
A methane/propane economy would be much easier to reach than a hydrogen economy. The small size of H2 molecules creates difficulty when it comes to storing and transporting hydrogen gas. Creating hydrogen storage for transportation applications that is light enough, small enough, and safe enough is especially difficult. (We can do any 2 of the 3.) We can already to all 3 for propane.
Unfortunately, the 80% energy recovery is probably in the form of heat. To convert that back into electricity, we're most certainly going to lose about 60%, giving an overall efficiency of about 25%. Such low efficiencies are worth it to enable mobile applications, however.
True. Most such innovative tech articles are always incredibly optimistic. I am sure there are tons of engineering problems that need to be solved before this can actually be used.
Reading the title my biggest concern was low efficiency but 80% actually seems quite good.
There is still the issue of how much energy you need to expend supplying CO2 but as you'll be producing relatively pure CO2 when you burn the methane I doubt it would be that big an issue.
On the plus side it sounds as though the bacteria hasn't been optimised so to me it seems likely that greater efficiencies could be achieved.
It's hard to optimize bacteria. You get your bacterium juuuust right, and then you get it to multiply and by the time you have a tank full, it's been intelligently designed all over the damn place!
--EDIT---
I don't mind being downvoted, unless it's because people's sarcasm detector isn't working.
Your point seems valid. Why not pack it like this:
"It's hard to optimize bacteria. You get your bacterium juuuust right, and then you get it to multiply and by the time you have a tank full, their genome has already drifted."
I assumed that given the character of this website, and the italics, it should be obvious I meant that. But I guess not, there's a lesson here about being too clever.
the organism can take in electrons and use their energy to convert carbon dioxide into methane.
I don't know how exactly this organism works. It would be really game changing if this can be modified to use photons instead of electrons. Especially given that it's 80% energy efficient in terms of the final energy, after burning methane.
A methane/propane economy would be much easier to reach than a hydrogen economy. The small size of H2 molecules creates difficulty when it comes to storing and transporting hydrogen gas. Creating hydrogen storage for transportation applications that is light enough, small enough, and safe enough is especially difficult. (We can do any 2 of the 3.) We can already to all 3 for propane.
Unfortunately, the 80% energy recovery is probably in the form of heat. To convert that back into electricity, we're most certainly going to lose about 60%, giving an overall efficiency of about 25%. Such low efficiencies are worth it to enable mobile applications, however.