Synthesising glucose

louis · 2017-05-26 09:50:59

I think it would be good if the Mars pioneers had the capability of synthesising glucose. Here's an interesting discussion:

https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/com … rom_basic/

Looks like it is definitely possible as long as you have the energy supply.

If the pioneers had plenty of vitamins, minerals and maybe some concentrated protein with them, they could probably survive for many months, if they were able to produce glucose. Apparently we use on average 160 gs a day of which 120 go straight to the brain.

SpaceNut · 2017-05-26 19:20:08

Ok using Co2 to create C6H12O6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glucose

https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/que … ic-glucose

A relatively simple process is described by Kobayashi et. al where they use cellulose, a structural component of plants, which is ball milled, mixed with activated carbons and HCl and hydrolysed to produce glucose in high yield (88%).

RobertDyck · 2017-05-26 20:05:12

Years ago I proposed something like this. It's an idea I had when I was in grade 7, in 1974. Skylab was in orbit, the last mission completed less than a year at that time, and one more mission was planned but cancelled. My ideas in grade 7 were crude, but the basis for what I came up with in 2002. I posted the idea on New Mars in December 2015: Chloroplast life support

In short: Harvest chloroplasts from leaves of plants. Use isolated in-vitro chloroplasts for photosynthesis. In a plastic bag of sterile water, shine light for energy. Provide water filtered via reverse osmosis to ensure it remains sterile. Carbonate some water by adding CO2 under pressure, waiting for the CO2 to dissolve, then add that to the bag of chloroplasts. Carbonated water can be called seltzer or soda. Circulate water within the bag with an aquarium water pump. The bag would be a semi-permeable membrane to let O2 out, but keep water and CO2 in. A fan would blow cabin air across the bag.

Basic photosynthesis: 6 CO2 + 6 H2O → 6 O2 + C6H12O6

That's monosaccharide. Chloroplasts polymerize that to form complex carbohydrates; exactly which one depends on which plant you get the chloroplasts from. The easiest plant from which to harvest chloroplasts is a pea. Pea plants produce pea starch. Some of the water would be directed to a series of filters that would remove starch. You would have a thick starch syrup come out. That could be dried to form starch powder, as we're used to.

In-vitro chloroplasts are harvested as an undergraduate biochemistry lab experiment. Those only remain viable 20 minutes. I contest that can be extended by increasing the CO2:O2 ratio to reduce the amount of RuBP that oxidizes. If we can extend viability to months, these bags can be used as life support for a spacecraft, for interplanetary transit. On Mars we could grow peas in a greenhouse so we could harvest leaves for fresh bags.

elderflower · 2017-05-27 04:49:55

We have a fully developed and effective method of keeping chloroplasts operative for very long periods. Its called plants.

louis · 2017-05-27 06:32:24

I was thinking more of an emergency situation - let's say a farm hab is wiped out by a meteorite strike or the ascent vehicle fails and you're stuck on Mars for a while. I was wondering whether we can just use energy plus water plus CO2 to make glucose "from scratch" without using plant material, purely a chemistry lab approach.

elderflower wrote:

We have a fully developed and effective method of keeping chloroplasts operative for very long periods. Its called plants.

RobertDyck · 2017-05-27 10:33:47

elderflower wrote:

We have a fully developed and effective method of keeping chloroplasts operative for very long periods. Its called plants.

Now try to keep plants alive on a spacecraft with no gravity, no soil, no fertilizer. I'm tired of this argument. I'm trying to avoid getting snarky, but perhaps you haven't read the link. Most biologists keep saying this. Many biologists asked why I don't just use whole cyanobacteria? I pointed out they require fertilizer, not just CO2 and water. Their response is always "Yea, so?" The City of Winnipeg north end sewage treatment plant looks like this...

There is no room on a spacecraft for sewage treatment. You could reduce it somewhat for a Mars crew, but it'll always be far too big for a spacecraft. Some biologists keep arguing for a greenhouse farm on a spacecraft. And we're talking about the transit spacecraft, from Earth to Mars. The guys building the Orion capsule think that's appropriate for Mars. You think you can put sewage treatment on that? NASA did a study. From the time an astronaut has his first bowel movement in space until it becomes food on a plate is longer than the entire Mars mission. A greenhouse is absolutely necessary for a settlement on Mars, but there's no way you can do that on a spacecraft.

Chloroplasts require CO2 and H2O to produce O2 and monosaccharide. Chloroplasts then polymerize monosaccharides, releasing a water molecule at each join. You may be familiar with sucrose, aka white table sugar. It's a disaccharide: 2 monosaccharides joined. Starch has hundreds or thousands of monosaccharides joined to form one big starch molecule. Time from effluents from the human body to edible food is hours, not years. With equipment small enough for a space vehicle.

elderflower · 2017-05-28 06:58:10

On the space craft for four or five months I would argue for dehydrating faeces and then dumping them to minimise landed mass. On arrival on the surface you can start saving them for making soil. You will need to bring some live compost starter. There you can inflate a large greenhouse, or assemble one from panels and get a significant contribution to life support services.
I don't see the advantage in growing chloroplasts in plastic bags. Hydroponic plant growth is established technology and has been done on the ISS for experiments, but it's not going to clean a spacecraft atmosphere to a significant degree, nor offer a large source of food to compete with freeze dried material during the transfer to Mars. Mainly due to limitation of available area for gas diffusion. A plastic bag is not likely to be as effective as the stomata on a leaf.

Last edited by elderflower (2017-05-28 07:00:46)

Dave_Duca · 2017-05-28 08:27:55

Interesting...
- Chloroplasts in Plastic Bags
- Plastic Bags made from Petroleum
- Petroleum from Crude Oil
- Something that reacts with Crude Oil

Question...
Could the adding of Kerogens aid in either containment or migration
of organic transfers?

Merely asking a question here...
Plastic Bags were the Key Words.

RobertDyck · 2017-05-28 10:43:34

elderflower wrote:

it's not going to clean a spacecraft atmosphere to a significant degree, nor offer a large source of food

Is so. This could very quickly sound like a kindergarten argument. Do you have any basis for that claim?

Current life support requires electrolysis of water to generate oxygen. That takes a lot of power. ISS uses photovoltaic to generate that electricity, so very large solar arrays. These bags will use light directly to generate oxygen. Instead of large photovoltaic arrays, use mirrors to reflect sunlight through a window. It's far more efficient. The craft will still need solar arrays for electricity, but electrolysis of water consumes the majority of electricity so this eliminates the majority of the solar arrays. The window will need the same spectrally selective coating that spacecraft windows currently have. That filters out UV. Plants can get sunburn too, and in-vitro chloroplasts will not have repair capability.

If you click the link, I describe growing yeast on starch-water solution. That generates a little protein, as well as the complete vitamin B complex. All but vitamin B12. You could add an organism that produces B12, but it isn't bread yeast. The final product once cooked in a microwave oven will be white with the consistency of pudding, flavour and aroma of freshly baked bread. I purchased a bag of pea starch and tried it in my kitchen. It's fairly bland, but Ok. Think of it as a substitute for potatoes. This device would produce enough for continuous supply during transit.

Once on Mars it will provide life support backup. On a planet without a breathable atmosphere you need multiple life support systems, each using a completely different principle. And be able to mix-and-match components in multiple configurations. So no matter what goes wrong, you can still breathe. And Biosphere 2 had unexpected problems. Their bean crop developed a crop disease, so no beans. No matter what they did they couldn't get rid of it. So no beans. This demonstrates the need for backups. And a simple device that can produce starch is useful.

elderflower · 2017-05-28 16:01:55

Certainly I agree about backup, Robert.
The problem with your proposed system is that of getting gas to diffuse through the plastic bag material. If you don't want to use a lot of power to achieve gas separation so you can feed the bagged chloroplasts, you must find a membrane that does it as well as a leaf. Why not just use leaves?

RobertDyck · 2017-05-28 16:30:21

elderflower wrote:

Why not just use leaves?

Terraformer · 2017-05-29 10:18:50

Your point? We're not going to use a system scaled for a city. Obviously.

RobertDyck · 2017-05-29 12:27:31

Sewage processing is far to big, even scaled for a single Mars crew. Any living thing, whether hydroponic crops or algae, require complex nutrients. Recycling feces and/or urine to produce those nutrients requires large heavy equipment and a lot of time. As I said, NASA did a study based on the idea of recycling human waste to feed greenhouse crops. From the first bowel movement in space until the first meal ready to eat would take more time than the entire mission to Mars and back. The advantage with chloroplasts is they only require CO2 and water, and sunlight. That allows current cabin air scrubber and water recycling technology to provide what it needs. And cycle time is hours, not years.

louis · 2017-05-29 18:14:17

As I understand it you can produce protein by using bacteria as a seed. Presumably they can feed on sugar - so if you can chemically produce the sugar, then you can "manufacture" protein without conventional agriculture. I think it would be great to have these back-up food sources based in effect on simple energy input. Can't really follow this properly but in effect it says we can produce a lot of different proteins from bacteria using a number of "tricks" along the way:

http://chemistry.yoexpert.com/chemistry … a-399.html

RobertDyck · 2017-05-29 18:53:18

If you read the thread I linked, the thread I created in 2015, I proposed growing bread yeast on starch. By cooking the starch very briefly in a microwave oven, you can break up the starch sufficiently that yeast can grow on it. Yeast produces protein, lipids, and vitamin B. And I suggested using the same "yeast nutrient" available from a store that sells supplies for home-brew beer and wine. That "yeast nutrient" is diammonium phosphate, which provides nitrogen and phosphate in a form yeast can metabolise. And since it's used for beer and wine, it's obviously food safe. I tried it in my kitchen, it works.

But you said "chemically produce the sugar". How do you do that? My big thing is to use chloroplasts to do that.

louis · 2017-05-30 14:23:58

Not claiming to understand this, but it seems to suggest completely synthetic processes are being used to create sugars...

https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/a-s … 70.article

This refers to chemical synthesis of proteins...not sure what that definition encompasses...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2845543/

RobertDyck wrote:

If you read the thread I linked, the thread I created in 2015, I proposed growing bread yeast on starch. By cooking the starch very briefly in a microwave oven, you can break up the starch sufficiently that yeast can grow on it. Yeast produces protein, lipids, and vitamin B. And I suggested using the same "yeast nutrient" available from a store that sells supplies for home-brew beer and wine. That "yeast nutrient" is diammonium phosphate, which provides nitrogen and phosphate in a form yeast can metabolise. And since it's used for beer and wine, it's obviously food safe. I tried it in my kitchen, it works.
But you said "chemically produce the sugar". How do you do that? My big thing is to use chloroplasts to do that.

tahanson43206 · 2023-10-30 06:50:35

I just read this topic from the top, and decided to bring it back into view for at least a day.

RobertDyck, Louis and Elderflower were engaged in a back-and-forth about the effectiveness and practicality of RobertDyck's ideas about chloroplasts.

I'd like to see RobertDyck able to develop his ideas further, to the point of flying an experiment on the ISS while it is still in orbit, or in a stand-alone experimental space craft purpose designed. It will require some sales skill to persuade an organization to provide the funds.

I deduce that the idea won't sell itself, because if it could, it would have done so by now.

The momentum of previous practice, as expressed by Elderflower, is strong, and indeed, overwhelming.

(th)

Calliban · 2023-10-31 16:42:23

RobertDyck wrote:

If you read the thread I linked, the thread I created in 2015, I proposed growing bread yeast on starch. By cooking the starch very briefly in a microwave oven, you can break up the starch sufficiently that yeast can grow on it. Yeast produces protein, lipids, and vitamin B. And I suggested using the same "yeast nutrient" available from a store that sells supplies for home-brew beer and wine. That "yeast nutrient" is diammonium phosphate, which provides nitrogen and phosphate in a form yeast can metabolise. And since it's used for beer and wine, it's obviously food safe. I tried it in my kitchen, it works.
But you said "chemically produce the sugar". How do you do that? My big thing is to use chloroplasts to do that.

This is an interesting idea. Yeast extracts grown from hydrolised starch would also be useful for adding flavour to food. I have have always liked Marmite. It isn't for everyone. But a strong flavouring agent would allow nutritious but otherwise bland ingredients like algae flour to be converted into palatable foods. If flavourings and nutritional additives are light in weight, they could be imported from Earth, with only bulk ingredients made on Mars.

Last edited by Calliban (2023-10-31 16:43:36)

Calliban · 2024-01-31 04:28:14

This article discusses work that is being carried out using perovskite to make artificial leaves.
https://www.snexplores.org/article/sola … green-fuel

There is also discussion of work done with genetically modified bacteria, which produce acetate from CO2 and water. If these can be grown in thin panels on Mars surface, then the acetate can be harvested and used to support food production in compact underground facilities. Acetate is also a good starting material for manufacture of plastics.

Last edited by Calliban (2024-01-31 04:28:52)

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#1 2017-05-26 09:50:59

Synthesising glucose

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#4 2017-05-27 04:49:55

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#6 2017-05-27 10:33:47

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#7 2017-05-28 06:58:10

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#8 2017-05-28 08:27:55

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#9 2017-05-28 10:43:34

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#10 2017-05-28 16:01:55

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#11 2017-05-28 16:30:21

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#12 2017-05-29 10:18:50

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#13 2017-05-29 12:27:31

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