A next step in renewable Bionic Leaf fuel production

Recommendable! Contrast renewable energy with synthetic renewable fuels! The production based on photosynthesis of renewable fuels could be a virtuous recycling program of atmospheric carbon dioxide! Unfortunately, it seems it takes much longer to develop this technology into a real world application. Do not confuse this with bioethanol or biodiesel!

First, this Harvard chemistry professor, i.e. Daniel G. Nocera, who was interviewed for this article, turns out to be a typical member of the elite to call for dictatorial Big Government: "Scalable energy storage is energy storage that everybody can use. It needs to penetrate society, and it needs to displace the current energy infrastructure, which is based on carbon." What arrogant hubris!

Actually, the interview is more about water purification than the large scale production of synthetic renewable fuels through photosynthesis. However, it includes the splitting of water as an energy source.

"... Nocera has accomplished the solar fuels process of photosynthesis – the splitting of water to hydrogen and oxygen using light from neutral water, at atmospheric pressure and room temperature. He has performed this solar process at efficiencies of greater than 10%. ... He has since elaborated this invention to accomplish a complete artificial photosynthetic cycle. To do so, he created the bionic leaf, which is a bio-engineered bacterium that uses the hydrogen from that artificial leaf and carbon dioxide from air to make biomass and liquid fuels. ..." (Source)

"... The best batteries store energy 50 to 100 times less than fuel. Take a Tesla. You’re getting into a huge battery. That’s what you’re sitting in: a massive battery that’s replacing the little gas tank in the back of your car. No matter what though, the batteries run up against their limit and have to recharge, same as your phone. Fuels have much more capacity to store energy, which is when you get to the scalable piece. ...

We did that years ago with the Artificial Leaf system we developed. It is completely renewable because when you take the hydrogen it produces and you recombine it with oxygen, you get water, or if you have hydrogen as a fuel directly, or in combination with carbon dioxide to make a liquid fuel, and then you burn that fuel, you get the water back. You’re not using up the water, you’re cycling it. 
In most other catalysts that do water splitting, the water has to come from pristine environments or they corrode. My group created what’s called self-healing catalysts, and they fix themselves in real time. Because they self-heal, you don’t need to use pure water sources. After, all, almost 97 percent of the world’s water is impure. That’s what we added to our system in this latest approach. It combines forward osmosis, to purify the water, with water splitting so you can take dirty water and then get it to a clean water stage, which is then split to make hydrogen and oxygen. ..."

Turning seawater into stored energy – Harvard Gazette

Here is the link to the underlying research paper:

Continuous electrochemical water splitting from natural water sources via forward osmosis