C1NET: CHEMICALS FROM C1 GAS

随着经济和人口的增长，在发展中国家的推动下，对化学品和能源的需求不断增加，这些国家的日益繁荣助长了人们对发达国家生活质量改善的渴望。目前的能源和化学需求是通过煤、石油和天然气等矿物燃料的开采和加工来满足的。这些资源是有限的，经常出现在世界上政治不稳定的地区，它们的利用对气候产生了严重的影响，包括污染和温室气体（GHG）排放的增加。因此，国际社会面临的主要挑战是最大限度地利用可持续的化学品和能源，以保护环境，同时确保后者不会对粮食供应产生不利影响。在这方面，可再生能源和化学品将在全球初级能源供应中发挥越来越大的作用。因此，英国政府和其他国家制定了具有挑战性的温室气体减排目标，部分目的是利用生物途径生产化学品。通过生物系统生产化学和生物燃料所采用的传统战略依赖于将植物生物质中更易于处理的成分（糖和淀粉）转化为化学品和燃料。这些微生物将甘蔗或玉米等植物中容易获取的糖和/或淀粉进行发酵，并将其转化为生物乙醇等生物燃料。这引起了人们对使用这些产品作为食物的竞争的担忧，以及对所谓的“第二代”生物燃料的重新关注。它们是由来自非粮食作物或农业废物的细胞壁材料（木质纤维素）产生的。然而，木质纤维素极难被分解成糖。事实证明，以具有成本效益的方式克服这种顽固性是极具挑战性的。另一种方法是直接捕获碳，通过利用某些细菌“吃”单一碳气体，如一氧化碳（CO）、二氧化碳（CO2）和甲烷（CH4）的能力。因此，例如，这些气体被注入发酵容器的液体介质中，它们被某些细菌消耗并转化为有用的化学物质和燃料。幸运的是，像一氧化碳这样的气体是一种丰富的资源，也是钢铁制造、炼油和化工生产等行业的废物。此外，它可以很容易地以合成气（Syngas）的形式产生，通过气化（加热）林业和农业残留物，城市废物和煤炭。通过允许使用所有这些可用的低成本非粮食资源，这种过程既克服了与传统乙醇生产相关的“食物与燃料”问题，又规避了与“第二代”生物燃料相关的许多挑战。此外，捕获燃料和化学生产工业排放的大量CO（一旦释放到大气中就注定要变成CO2）提供了化石碳排放的净减少。在全球范围内，人们对研究那些能够在C1气体上生长的生物的生物学，以及将它们作为化学制造平台进行商业开发，都产生了浓厚的兴趣。在这方面，英国落后于潮流，令人失望。C1NET的目标是通过鼓励创建一个充满活力的英国学者社区来纠正这一不足，该社区的任务是解开气体发酵的生物、化学和过程工程方面的问题，并引导这些努力的转化成果走向商业应用。该网络将提供“胶水”，将英国的生物学家、化学家、计算建模师/数学家和过程工程师聚集在一起，以更好地理解和利用气体发酵过程，并将其转化为工业。

As economies and populations grow, there is an ever increasing demand for chemicals and energy, driven by developing countries, where increasing prosperity is fueling the desire for the improved quality of life visible in the developed world. Current energy and chemical needs are met by the extraction and processing of fossil fuels, in the form of coal, petroleum and natural gas. Such resources are finite, are frequently found in politically unstable regions of the world, and their utilisation is having severe impacts on the climate, both through pollution and increased greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The key challenge facing the global community is, therefore, to maximize the use of sustainable sources of chemicals and of energy to safeguard the environment while ensuring that the latter do not detrimentally impact food supplies. In this regard, renewable sources of energy and chemicals will play an increasing role in the global primary energy supply. Accordingly, the UK government and others have set challenging targets for reductions in GHG in part by aiming to produce chemicals using biological routes. Traditional strategies adopted for chemical and biofuel generation via biological systems have been reliant on the conversion of the more tractable components of plant biomass (sugars and starch) into chemicals and fuels. The microbes employed ferment the easily accessible sugar and/or starch of plants, such as sugar cane or corn, and convert them into biofuels such as bioethanol. This has led to concerns over competition with use of these products as food, and a re-focussing of efforts on so-called 'second generation' biofuels. These are generated from cell wall material (lignocellulose) derived from non-food crops or agricultural wastes. However, lignocellulose is extremely resistant to being broken down into sugar. Overcoming this recalcitrance in a cost effective manner is proving extremely challenging. An alternative route would be to directly capture carbon, by harnessing the ability of certain bacteria to 'eat' single carbon gases such as carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4). Thus, for instance, such gases are injected into the liquid medium of fermentation vessels they are consumed by certain bacteria and converted into useful chemicals and fuels. Fortunately, gases such as CO are an abundant resource, and a waste product of industries such as steel manufacturing, oil refining and chemical production. Moreover, it can be readily generated in the form of Synthesis Gas ('Syngas'), by the gasification (heating) of forestry and agricultural residues, municipal waste and coal. By allowing the use of all these available low cost, non-food resources, such a process both overcomes the "Food versus Fuel" issues associated with traditional ethanol production, and circumvents many of the challenges associated with 'second generation' biofuels. Furthermore, capturing the large volume of CO (destined to become CO2 once released into the atmosphere) emitted by industry for fuel and chemical production provides a net reduction in fossil carbon emissions. There has been a global upsurge of interest both in studying the biology of those organisms able to grow on C1 gases, as well as commercially exploiting them as platforms for chemical manufacture. In this respect the UK lags disappointingly behind the curve. It is the objective of the C1NET to correct this deficiency by encouraging the creation of a vibrant community of UK academics tasked with unravelling the biological, chemical and process engineering aspects of gas fermentation and to steer the translational outputs of these endeavours towards commercial application. The network will provide the 'glue' to bring together a UK-based cadre of biologists, chemists, computational modellers/mathematicians and process engineers to better understand and thence exploit gas fermentation processes for translation into industry.