A microbiologist at the University of Massachusetts has succeeded in making the gasoline substitute, butanol, from microbes in the laboratory. Electrofuels researchers have been genetically engineering microorganisms that, as one researcher put it, "poop out" chemicals that can burn directly in a gas tank. To produce electrofuels, researchers feed carbon dioxide to microorganisms, and run an electrical current through the tank in which they are grown.

Electrofuels microbes are derived from exotic bacteria that live underground or in other places (such as geothermal springs) where photosynthesis doesn't occur. In the wild, they survive on electrons derived from minerals in the surrounding soil. But in the lab, their genes are transferred to other bacteria that can more easily be grown in vats hooked up to a power grid that can provide the needed electricity. If the power source is solar, the outcome is an alternative to photosynthesis.

Electrofuels offer a new way to harvest the sun's energy—one that might be considerably more efficient than conventional biofuel production. Not to mention that they don't require farmland, tractors, fertilizer, or irrigation water. Moreover, electrofuels bacteria have been further modified to produce chemicals that can be used as fuel.

The electrofuels process can also be used to make things other than fuel. Scientists have engineered a strain of Pyrococcus (a microorganism that normally lives in near-boiling-point hot springs) to make a compound called 3-hydroxyproprionic acid from carbon dioxide and hydrogen. this compound is an important intermediate for making plastics too. So there's a possibility that this advanced energy research can lead to a different way of making plastics as well as a better way of fueling vehicles. As per the program's advocates, chemicals made this way could substitute fossil fuels currently used in petrochemical production, leading to achieving green !--object--ives.

Electrofuels research, however, is still in its infancy and any positive commercial outcome may be a long way off.

For more, visit http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2013/06/130617-electrofuels-using-microbes-to-make-biofuel/.