Nano-biochemical Approach for ‘One Pot’ Reduction of Atmospheric N 2 and CO 2 for Bio-fuel and Bio-fertilizer

Abstract

Taming the global warming and air pollution is one of the major issues till date and alternative reduced nitrogen carbon sources for developing bio-fertilizer and bio-fuel, respectively, is highly sought. Carbon dioxide reduction without mimicking the plant photosynthesis, serving the reactions in dark would be of love as it can overcome the burden of exposing light sources in vessel. Bacteria were isolated from Nepalease prehistoric nature soils (rhizosphere of tree fern) that included extracellular electron transfer bacteria Geobacter sps, diazotrophic Azotobacter sps, Pseudomonas sps and diazotrophic autotroph Azospirillium sps on the basis of Carbon Catabolite Repression (CCR). Syntrophic growth of microbial consortium was developed for reducing nitrogen (Nessler’s test for ammonium) and carbon (Molisch’s test). The reduced carbon was quantified by DNS method. Ethanol was detected (Dichromate oxidation method) by fermenting with commercially available yeast. The residue after ethanol production can be used as Nitrogen fertilizer since these diazotrophs can fix atmospheric N 2 upon application in soil. In addition, the CO2 reduction potential will increase soil carbon content supporting the growth of other microbes in amending soil. Biogenic silica nanoparticles also synthesized from rice husk char for augmenting reduction rate in syntrophic growth. Synthesized silica nanoparticles were characterized by XRD, FTIR and SEM. Since silica is the most abundant minerals, functionalization of Si with ammonium group as a nitrogenous fertilizer to substitute urea was done. The developed technology could be further developed to mitigate global warming through nitrogen fixation to substitute urea and non-photosynthetic CO2 reduction for bio-fuel and others. Keywords: Bacterial consortium, Syntrophic growth, CO2 reduction, Nitrogen fixation, Electrotrophs and Electricity, Biogenic Silica nanoparticle, Bio-ethanol, Bio-fertilizer.