Food from the air thanks to electricity: possible or science fiction?

With a title like this, one can immediately think of a clickbait title, but that’s not the case. It is a concrete study that started from a NASA concept. The goal is to create food, more specifically of proteins, using electricity and air. The first prototype of the research has already been built and is located in Finland, in Lappeenranta. Behind all this there is also Solar Foods a company responsible for creating a natural food protein called Solein.

It is a particular project as the parties involved are so many and important. As mentioned, the concept behind it is NASA while the projects involve the VTT Technical Research Center Finnish and theUniversity of Technology of the aforementioned city. In addition to these, the ESA Business Incubation Center. The fact that the names of the two major space agencies in the world appear in this project is made obvious by the fact that creating a food source from the air would be perfect for space.

Food from the air: how it works

Here is the statement of Augusta Pownall: Solein is produced by applying electricity to water to release bubbles of carbon dioxide and hydrogen, adding living microbes to the liquid, which create a protein which is then dried to form a protein-rich powder. ” This technology could be exploited in remote areas of the planet such as Antarctica, but also in space, as mentioned. “The company expects to produce enough powder to make two billion meals a year by 2022.”