Waste gases of many branches of industry contain mainly carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. Nowadays, these gases are simply blown into our atmosphere, but this may soon change. The idea is to use the power of bacteria to turn toxic waste gases into valuable compounds such as acetate or ethanol. These can be used afterwards as biofuels or basic compounds for synthetic materials. The first real-size test plants are already under evaluation, using this conversion at an industrial scale, and the stars of these process are bacteria that devour carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and dihydrogen, among which Clostridium autoethanogenum is by far the favorite.
Click here for original story, Cellular powerplant recycles waste gases
Source: Phys.org