An MIT engineer is developing a process that would not only remove carbon dioxide from the environment, but also turn it into solid carbonates that could be used in construction.
’We want to capture carbon dioxide and turn it into something that will be stable for hundreds of thousands of years rather than store it underground,’ said Angela Belcher, the WM Keck professor of energy at the university.
By genetically engineering ordinary baker’s yeast, Belcher and two of her graduate students, Roberto Barbero and Elizabeth Wood, have created a process that can produce about two pounds of carbonate for every pound of carbon dioxide captured.
To create the yeast-powered process, Belcher drew inspiration from marine animals that build their own rock-solid shells from carbon dioxide and mineral ions dissolved in seawater.
Funded by the Italian energy company Eni, the new process requires two steps. The first step is capturing carbon dioxide in water. Second, the dissolved carbon dioxide is combined with mineral ions to form solid carbonates.
Since yeast does not normally perform any of those reactions, Belcher and her students had to engineer them to express genes found in organisms such as the abalone. Those genes code for enzymes and other proteins that help move carbon dioxide through the mineralisation process.
’We’re trying to mimic natural biological processes,’ said Belcher. ’But we don’t necessarily want to make the exact same structure that an abalone does.’
Some companies have commercialised processes that capture carbon dioxide and convert it to solid material, but those efforts rely on a chemical process to capture carbon dioxide. The MIT team’s biological system captures carbon dioxide at a higher rate, said Barbero. Another advantage of the biological system is that it requires no heating or cooling and no toxic chemicals.
Next, the team plans to try scaling up the process to handle the huge volumes of carbon dioxide produced at fossil-fuel-burning power plants.
Sounds very promising. Storing carbon in vast amounts in the ground always seemed like a ticking time-bomb to me.
Best news for the planet in quite a while!
What effect would this have on the acidity of sea water?
Removing calcium, sodium, and other cations to form carbonates would decrease the pH of sea water – are other processes involved?
I would like to suggest a floatation of the solid material with an air bubble train rather than a precipitation to collect the material.
Why do they use GMO to capture CO2? There is an existing algae called EHUX which is successfully performing the very same process since billion on years (e.g. forming the clay cliffs of Dover and Ruegen)
This seems to be what Calcitech have been doing for years!
The article does not mention the specific mineral carbonate that will producer the “wonder construction material”. Not calcium surely, I hope. Nor magnesium. If neither of these, which? I remain deeply sceptical about all such claims until there can be some more detail. The World hardly needs improvements on Nature’s methods for creating these common and useful rocks!
Many interesting and very apposite comments already posted, but one more to add to the comments about calcium, chalk cliffs etc.: when we make cement as our fundamental building material, we take chalk and similar carbonates and use heat to drive off the CO2 – a hugely powerful generator of greenhouse gas!
It seems to me that this all points to another puppy chasing its own tail. Perhaps a step backwards is required to examine the bigger picture before a lot more effort is expended on abstruse micro-engineering to solve the wrong problem.
Trees are an excellent method of turning CO2 into construction material.
Maybe this new technology can produce a material with the durability of concrete without the energy use to make it.