• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Skip to navigation
Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

  • Home
  • News
    • Alternative Protein
    • Business of Food
    • Connected Kitchen
    • COVID-19
    • Delivery & Commerce
    • Foodtech
    • Food Waste
    • Future of Drink
    • Future Food
    • Future of Grocery
    • Podcasts
    • Startups
    • Restaurant Tech
    • Robotics, AI & Data
  • Spoon Plus Central
  • Events
  • Newsletter
  • Connect
    • Send us a Tip
    • Spoon Newsletters
    • Slack
    • RSS
    • The Spoon Food Tech Survey Panel
  • Advertise
  • About
    • Staff
  • Become a Member
The Spoon
  • Home
  • News
    • Alternative Protein
    • Business of Food
    • Connected Kitchen
    • Foodtech
    • Food Waste
    • Future Food
    • Future of Grocery
    • Restaurant Tech
    • Robotics, AI & Data
  • Spoon Plus Central
  • Newsletter
  • Events
  • Jobs
  • Slack
  • Advertise
  • About
  • Become a Member

Forget Air Protein, It’s Time for Air Fat. Swedish Researchers Make Fat Using Carbon Dioxide and Electricity

by Michael Wolf
June 26, 2020June 26, 2020Filed under:
  • Alternative Protein
  • News
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

Making protein with electricity and carbon dioxide is neat and all, but what about fat?

A group of chemists from the Swedish research organization RISE recently developed a method to do just that, only unlike the new crop of startups that make protein through a biological process using electricity as an energy source for hydrogen or methane-eating bacteria, this fat-making innovation the group terms ‘Power to Food’ does it completely through chemistry.

The breakthrough was first reported in Swedish-language food tech news site AGFO.

“We have no biology, it’s just chemistry,” said Anders Lorén, a researcher and chemist for RISE who conceived of the concept. “We believe that scalability is worse in a biological system.”

To convert the CO2 into fat, the Power to Food method essentially recreates a process that already happens in nature using chemistry.

“You can think of this as electrical photosynthesis,” said Marcus Vestergren, the other researcher on the project. “Nature does this, they take carbon dioxide and water and make energy carriers. We emulate it with electrochemistry.”

The researchers believe this process could be highly scalable and could ultimately produce enough fat to replace a significant amount of palm-oil production. They envision production plants for electricity-derived fat using carbon outputs from large producers such as oil refineries or paper mills.

“Instead of retrieving palm oil from a plantation using shredded rainforest, we could produce the fat on a limited area on a large scale with minimal impact on the planet,” says Marcus Vestergren.

You can read more about the Power to Food breakthrough by RISE at AGFO.


Related

Get the Spoon in your inbox

Just enter your email and we’ll take care of the rest:

Find us on some of these other platforms:

  • Apple Podcasts
  • Spotify
Tagged:
  • Power to Food

Post navigation

Previous Post Byte Adds Dynamic Pricing to Its Smart Vending Fridges
Next Post Country Garden Opened a Massive Robot Restaurant Complex in China This Week

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Get The Spoon in Your Inbox

Subscribe to Our Podcast!

Subscribe in iTunes or listen on Spotify.

The Big-Box Ghost Kitchen Is Here
Food Tech News: New Asian e-Grocer, Oatly’s pre-IPO Starbucks Rollout
UNEP: 931M Tons of Food Sold to Consumers Gets Wasted
Albertsons Partners with Tortoise for Remote Controlled Robot Delivery
Shake Shack Is Trialing Biodegradable Cutlery and Straws

Footer

  • About
  • Sponsor the Spoon
  • The Spoon Events
  • Spoon Plus

© 2016–2021 The Spoon. All rights reserved.

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.