Biogas: Our future depends on microbes

 By Magdalena De La Cruz 

For decades now, greenhouse gases have continuously warmed our planet by several degrees which has led to a negative impact on our oceans, plants, animals, and human population. There are many sources of greenhouse gases but those negatively impacting our environment the most have been human-generated. One of the most prevalent gases taking up more than half of the greenhouse gas emissions in 2018 was carbon dioxide contributing to 81% of greenhouse emissions. Following carbon dioxide is methane taking up 10% of emissions. Carbon dioxide enters our atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels, and methane is emitted during the production and transport of fossil fuels as well as the decomposition of our landfills. While carbon dioxide makes up the majority, methane’s ability to hold heat is much larger. In fact, it contributes to global warming 25 times more than CO2.  

Total Emissions in 2018  (Figure by EPA)

 

While we can't ultimately stop our use of fossil fuels, we can limit it. There have been public and privately funded campaigns promoting a smarter way of living. By walking, biking, or taking public transportation, we’d be significantly reducing gas emissions or by limiting our food waste material, we could be reducing our growing impact on landfills. To make up for our losses, biogas production can help in providing a naturally produced biofuel made from the decomposition of organic waste. Using many microorganisms like hydrolytic, fermenting, and organic acid-oxidizing bacteria, biogas is made from their biochemical conversions of organic matter such as food or animal waste. Through anaerobic digestion, their decomposition produces methane along with other gases. So if put in a landfill, biogas systems could capture these gases and make it into biogas that can then be used as a source for energy or heat. Its production is nonpolluting and no combustion takes place during its process so there are no emissions contributing to the greenhouse effect. While it would be smart of us to make the switch, there are still some problems preventing us from doing so. Large scale production of biogas for a large population is difficult to do so since there are still few ways to simplify the process at a cheap cost. Biogas also contains impurities that can erode some metal parts of a car engine. Despite these letdowns, biogas still provides an advantage we can’t afford to miss out on. With more research, biogas systems could be applied at a large scale that would decrease our effect on global warming so that in a few years, we’d be able to save our ecosystems being affected by the greenhouse effect.

References 

HomeBioGas. (n.d) Advantages and Disadvantages of Biogas.

   https://www.homebiogas.com/Blog/141/Advantages_and_Disadvantages_of_Biogas

Plugge, C. (2017) Biogas. Microbial Biotechnology, 10(5), 1128-1130. 

  https://sfamjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1111/1751-7915.12854