HELIOCULTURETM: An integrated approach to photosynthetic fuel and chemical production

Helioculture^TMis a transformational direct-to-product technology that efficiently captures solar energy and waste carbon dioxide to catalyze the synthesis of renewable fuels and chemicals. This process uses a genetically engineered cyanobacterium to divert the majority of photosynthetically fixed carbon from biomass generation to a variety of fuel and value-added commodity chemical products, which are secreted in a semi-continuous closed reactor system.  This direct process combined with key design features promises step-change productivity advances over competing biotechnologies that rely on biomass conversions.

Metabolic engineering and synthetic biology have provided guidelines and tools for the design, construction, and optimization of the catalyst from photon capture to product synthesis.  Data will be presented to demonstrate the photosynthetic production of ethanol and various hydrocarbon products.  We report here on the photocatalyst and process design as well as the theoretical and practical productivities of the process, and also outline progress in implementing Helioculture at scale