Making Protein Using Air, Water, Electricity, and Microbes | Hacker News Reader

Making Protein Using Air, Water, Electricity, and Microbes

theguardian.com

61 pointsscribu19 comments

Duplicate: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20311235

On HN we only count a post as a duplicate if the story has had significant attention; that one maybe doesn't quite clear the bar.

This is a new alternative to our current, photosynthesis-based food chain. For those who think it's a scam, consider that they have already convinced the European Space Agency to be a partner: https://www.forbes.com/sites/lanabandoim/2018/11/26/how-a-st...

And for those who think the headline is misleading: It's comparable to saying that plant protein comes from sun+air+water. They first build a small bioreactor with some microbes inside but after that the input is (mostly?) air (including carbon dioxide and nitrogen), electricity (preferably from solar) and a little water, and the output "looks and tastes like wheat flour, with 50% protein content and 5–10 % fat and 20–25 % carbs." https://solarfoods.fi/bioprocess/

A much more detailed description can be found on the related opinion piece here: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/31/electr...

The process involves using microbes seeded with a bunch of minerals in addition to the air, water, and electricity, so this headline oversimplifies things quite a bit.

Meanwhile the opinion piece also makes the case for why anyone should care: in short, figuring out ways to grow food in radically less space - and in particular, using barren land (the article says sunny deserts would be ideal for this method) - is key to reversing significant environmental harm done by industrial agriculture.

^ that’s a summary of the opinion piece, I don’t have a lot of knowledge or opinion in this area.

Wonder how this production mechanism pencils out as a way to feed everyone for years without sun, i.e., relative to other options explored in https://www.appropedia.org/Feeding_Everyone_No_Matter_What

and microbes. Is it pure clickbait to leave off the most vital part of this reaction?

OK, we've added microbes to the title above. An Oxford comma too!

I wouldn't include the microbes in the list of ingredients since the process grows the microbes. I would suggest "Making Protein From Air, Water, and Electricity"

We'll get even more complaints if we say 'from' instead of 'using'.

Looking at the article it seems like the microbes predate the process?

Yes, but they are the "machine" (that doesn't deplete). The inputs are air, water and electricity just as the title says.

Hey cool. I mean basically everyone knew something else had to be involved. Thanks for the update.

I didn't know how to include the oxford comma in my comment, but briefly considered how :)

Original paper and the other papers by the authors (leading up to the resulting startup)

[1] https://sci-hub.tw/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.07.089#

[2] https://scholar.google.nl/citations?hl=en&user=6tlAHpQAAAAJ&...

[3] https://scholar.google.nl/citations?hl=en&user=F4_L9CYAAAAJ&...

I would say its at least 3800 million years old

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/blu...

https://www.sciencealert.com/the-earliest-signs-of-life-on-l...

What is harder to locate in the articles, science papers and video is what precise bacterium or bacteria makes the Solein?

Replying to this comment - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20257882

How do you get the board for $113? Has the price increased since?

"and fed with carbon dioxide and hydrogen bubbles"

This is nonsense. Protein needs nitrogen. Maybe they get it from air, but I suspect this isn't real.

It's real, but the marketing slogan doesn't include all the details mentioned here: "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." https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/31/electr...

You sort of missed the LIVING MICROBES part of the article. Which is where the uh, PROTEIN comes from ... smh ...

Soylent Green is people!

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