Methane Single Cell Protein: securing protein supply during global food catastrophes

Abstract

A catastrophe such as supervolcanic eruption, asteroid impact or nuclear winter could reduce global food production by 10% or more. Human civilization’s food production system is unprepared to respond to such an event, and current preparedness centers around food stockpiles, an excessively expensive solution given that a global catastrophic risk (GCR) scenario could hamper conventional agriculture for 5 to 10 years. Instead, it is more cost-effective to consider alternative food production techniques requiring little to no sunlight.This study analyses the potential of single-cell protein (SCP) produced from methane (natural gas) as an alternative food source in the case of a catastrophe that considerably blocked sunlight, the most severe food shock scenario. To determine its viability, the following are quantified: global production potential of methane SCP, capital costs, material and energy requirements, ramp-up rates and retail prices. In addition, potential bottlenecks to fast deployment are considered.While providing a higher quality of protein than other alternatives, the production capacity would be slower to ramp up. Based on 24/7 construction of facilities, 7-11% of global protein requirements could be fulfilled at the end of the first year. Results suggest that investment in production ramp up should aim to meet no more than humanity’s minimum protein requirements. Uncertainty remains around the transferability of labor and equipment production, among other key areas. Research on these questions could help reduce the negative impact of potential food-related GCRs.

Nutrition in Abrupt Sunlight Reduction Scenarios: Envisioning Feasible Balanced Diets on Resilient Foods

“…For simplicity, the energy needs to be covered are based on the minimum recommended requirements of an average adult as proposed by the World Health Organization (WHO) for food management during emergencies [ 23 ]: 2100 kcal of energy intake, for a body weight of 62 kg [ 24 ], as carried out in previous food-related GCR assessments [ 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 ].…”

“…Single-cell protein from agriculture-independent sources such as methane- or hydrogen-oxidizing bacteria could complement or replace animal proteins [ 57 ]. Ramping up this technology has the potential to make a significant contribution to fulfilling the protein requirements of the global population [ 26 , 28 ]. Here it is estimated that it would be available around one year after the catastrophe.…”

Rapid repurposing of pulp and paper mills, biorefineries, and breweries for lignocellulosic sugar production in global food catastrophes

“…Of these methods, 24/7 construction produced the greatest acceleration with reasonable penalty, and was therefore selected as the construction method to be used during the scaling calculations. The methodology for fast construction time and cost estimation developed here has been useful in several other works (García Martínez et al, 2020, 2021c, 2021d, 2021b.…”

“…The simpler analysis performed in this previous work estimated that cellulosic sugar could scale to reach 100% of global human caloric requirements after a year (Denkenberger and Pearce, 2014), which has turned out to be optimistic. More detailed analysis has been conducted investigating other industrial solutions such as single cell protein from natural gas (García Martínez et al, 2020) or from CO 2 and hydrogen (García Martínez et al, 2021d), synthetic fat (García Martínez et al, 2021b), and acetic acid from CO 2 via microbial electrosynthesis (García Martínez et al, 2021c). CO 2 could also be used to chemically synthesize carbohydrates (García Martínez et al, 2021a).…”

Open Source Vacuum Oven Design for Low-Temperature Drying: Performance Evaluation for Recycled PET and Biomass

“…Single cell protein (SCP) is protein that is derived from single-celled organisms such as bacteria and algae [79]. SCP has been proposed as an alternative food source to deal with growing food insecurity [80,81]. To convert microbial biomass into single cell protein, biomass needs to be treated to both preserve and inactivate the cells.…”