Feeding The World With Power-To-Protein

As of May 2020, the global population is estimated to be 7.8 billion, and by the end of the century it’ll be around 11 billion. How are we going to feed so many people and how can we protect the environment while doing so? Power-to-protein, a method in which a small amount of energy is used to turn basic ingredients into a large amount protein, might be the answer.

Protein is a vital part of the human diet, as it is needed to build tissue, hormones, enzymes, among many other essential functions. Considered a macronutrient, the average person needs about 50 grams per day.

Unfortunately, providing humans with enough protein is already problematic and stressing to the environment, as the sixth mass extinction is being caused by humans. A burgeoning population will only make the situation exponentially worse. In particular, humans are running out of fertile land, putting a limit on proteins from both animals and plants and forcing us to further destroy habitats. While some alternative farming methods are being employed, such as indoor farming, the world is in need of quick and easy protein.

Power-To-Protein

The basic idea is to take the building blocks of proteins (mainly oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen) and use simple organisms to combine them. In a lab, this is relatively easy, but doing it on a commercial scale is problematic.

First of all, finding the building blocks and turning them into a usable form is more difficult than it sounds. While these elements are all around us, they cannot be easily grabbed out of the air, water, or land and isolated for use. To do so, requires a lot of energy. For example, oxygen and hydrogen can be harvested from water, but this requires using electricity to split the molecule, a process known as electrolysis. Carbon can be harvested from carbon dioxide, but this requires first isolating it from other air molecules and then splitting the carbon molecule apart. Nitrogen is also found in large quantities in the atmosphere and can be isolated from other air molecules through cooling process. All of these processes are resource intensive, making it difficult and environmentally harmful, unless powered renewables.

Once the building blocks are harvested, it takes bacteria, yeast, or fungus to combine them. All three of these naturally produce protein that is suitable for human consumption. Under laboratory conditions protein yields can dwarf those found in nature.

Ramping this process up to make a global difference requires using renewable energy sources and finding easier to harvest sources of the building blocks. For example, this team believes nitrogen can be more easily harvested from waste streams. They also developed an efficient two-stage process, in which anaerobic bacteria is used in the first stage and aerobic yeast or fungus is used in the second. They claim they achieved a protein mass-fraction of close to 50%, meaning they were able to produce as much protein by weight as the organisms that produced it.

This idea is still in its infancy, but it is gaining traction. In particular, a team from the University of Tübingen, led by Professor Lars Angenent just published an exhaustive analysis of this process. They are focused on not using organisms that have not been genetically modified.

If successful Angenent and other power-to-protein researchers could save countless lives, both human and non-human.

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