The website is a bit sparse, I wonder where they get elemental hydrogen and nitrogen from. Does anyone know anything more about their technology, e.g. how they actually construct the proteins (I'm guessing either in cells, or using some enzymes outside of cells - but then what produces the enzymes?).<p>Edit: Ah, an article posted by another comment includes more information:<p><i>> This sounds like science fiction, but it is already approaching commercialisation. For the past year, a group of Finnish researchers has been producing food without either animals or plants. Their only ingredients are hydrogen-oxidising bacteria, electricity from solar panels, a small amount of water, carbon dioxide drawn from the air, nitrogen and trace quantities of minerals such as calcium, sodium, potassium and zinc. The food they have produced is 50% to 60% protein; the rest is carbohydrate and fat. They have started a company (Solar Foods) that seeks to open its first factory in 2021. This week it was selected as an incubation project by the European Space Agency.</i><p><i>> They use electricity from solar panels to electrolyse water, producing hydrogen, which feeds bacteria that turn it back into water. Unlike other forms of microbial protein (such as Quorn), it requires no carbohydrate feedstock – in other words, no plants.</i><p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/31/electric-food-sci-fi-diet-planet-food-animals-environment" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/31/electr...</a><p>Edit2: I wonder how this (water + CO2 + solar power) compares with just growing algae in water in the sun, in terms of energy efficiency and process stability.
This is there whitepaper:<p><a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/hsbi4amp0am0l5y/Solar_Foods_Flyer_03_2018.pdf?dl=0" rel="nofollow">https://www.dropbox.com/s/hsbi4amp0am0l5y/Solar_Foods_Flyer_...</a><p>The website prompts you to sign up to the mailing list to get a copy. Its very sparse on details unfortunately.
Maybe this can be developed on a massive scale for CO2 capture.
If people are hesistant to consume this protein, it could even be used to feed fish / animals.<p>Edit - could be a possible candidate for ycombinator nature fund.
Interesting idea - biogeneration of "food" for space travel first, expanding to terrestrial once the price is down. But desperately short on detail.
Can vegetarians on Earth benefit from this sustainable protein as well?<p>It would be great to have options beyond soy, vital wheat gluten, and the usual bean/grain/yeast medleys!
Speculating that they plan to use hydrogen-reducing bacteria: This will require substantial post-processing since bacteria have too much RNA and DNA to safely be a major dietary component for humans.<p>Since the website mentions a Mars play, it's relevant that this drawback has been known in the space habitation literature since at least the 1970s.
I think this is kind of similar to what some friends have done with Ecoduna.com. The challenge with Solar Foods must be to produce enough food from a spaceship sized unit.
"It's a single-celled protein combined with synthetic aminos, vitamins, and minerals. Everything the body needs."<p>Finally, something we can eat when the robots take over
What's the areal efficiency of this process? The primary input to the growth reactor is hydrogen gas. The primary input to producing renewable hydrogen is electricity. A solar farm in a good location, like Desert Sunlight, achieves an annualized power density of about 10 megawatts per km^2 (0.1 megawatts (100 kW) per hectare).<p>It takes about 50 kWh of electricity to produce a kilogram of hydrogen via electrolysis:<p><a href="https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/doe-technical-targets-hydrogen-production-electrolysis" rel="nofollow">https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/doe-technical-targets-...</a><p>According to this paper by some of the people behind Solar Foods, "Carbon emission avoidance and capture by producing in-reactor microbial biomass based food, feed and slow release fertilizer: Potentials and limitations" ( <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326571432_Carbon_emission_avoidance_and_capture_by_producing_in-reactor_microbial_biomass_based_food_feed_and_slow_release_fertilizer_Potentials_and_limitations" rel="nofollow">https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326571432_Carbon_em...</a> ), it takes about 560 kg of hydrogen to produce 1000 kg of dry microbial based biomass with a protein content of 70% [1].<p>At 100 kW/ha, a solar farm in a good location can produce<p>(100 / 50) * 24 * 365 = 17,520 kg of H2 per hectare, per year.<p>That in turn can produce<p>17520 / 0.56 = 31,286 kg of dry microbial biomass per year, containing<p>31286 * 0.7 = 21,900 kg of protein per hectare per year.<p>According to some (admittedly quite dated, circa-1972) data collected on this page, the crop with the best areal productivity of edible protein is soybeans at 400 kg/hectare/year.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edible_protein_per_unit_area_of_land" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edible_protein_per_unit_area_o...</a><p>According to table 2 in the article, the essential amino acid profile of this bacterial protein is equal or superior to soy in all respects. The areal protein productivity of a solar farm coupled to microbial reactors may be more than 50 times that of growing conventional crops. If the bacterial protein is used as animal feed for animals with a good feed conversion ratio (e.g. farmed salmon), it even looks like you could get more <i>animal protein</i> per hectare this way than a vegetarian diet can achieve with conventional farming. <i>And</i> the water requirements are reduced even more drastically than the area requirements. <i>And</i> the electricity production can take place on non-arable land. I would be interested to see more modern areal productivity figures for soy; presumably there has been some additional intensification since the early 1970s, though not 50x improvement.<p>[1] Hydrogen consumption is not stated <i>directly</i>, but they say that hydrogen at $3/kg makes up 60% of the $2800 cost to produce a dry tonne of bacterial biomass. (0.6 * 2800) / 3 = 560 kg of hydrogen.