New zero-gap reactor scales up 10x, converts CO2 into methane at 95% efficiency

Penn State researchers built a tenfold larger zero-gap microbial reactor for CO2-to-methane conversion.

The scaled system kept high methane output and about 95% energy efficiency using renewable electricity and water-splitting hydrogen.

The advance helps clear a key hurdle for microbial electrosynthesis at commercial scale.

It could store solar and wind power as methane and feed it into existing gas pipelines.