SUSTAINABLE HYDROGEN, AMMONIUM, AND BIOFUELS PRODUCTION

Abstract

Sustainable technologies are are often guided by our understanding of their natural equivalents. As such, our incomplete understanding of these natural processes limit our ability to design efficient and optimized synthetic schemes to address the challenges facing food and energy security. In particular, schemes using live organisms or purified proteins require that we either attempt to remove evolutionary features such as regulation or cope with unknown confounding factors resulting from the gaps in our knowledge. All three of the following chapters focus on furthering our understanding of the natural systems we wish to co-opt. The first chapter discusses producing biohydrogen via Azotobacter vinelandii, a soil bacterium that fixes nitrogen gas into ammonia aerobically using the enzyme, nitrogenase. Additionally, it shows how the produced biohydrogen can act as a proxy of nitrogenase activity such that we can quantify the in vivo inhibition that results from various nitrogenous compounds commonly found in the environment. The second chapter discusses growing green algae in turbidostat reactors as way to screen their compatibility with divergent growing technologies and commercial ventures. Lastly, the third chapter discusses how an oil-degrading marine bacterium, Marinobacter aquaeolei , produces wax esters via a partially defined wax ester biosynthesis pathway.