I should have been more specific. I was trying to ask about generating renewable energy and then using that at some other site for heating purposes. What kind of efficiency does electricity to heat get you compared to just burning fossil fuels on site? I am not sure if that is the best way of asking this question.
I am not an expert in traditional fermentation but I believe presence of contaminants depends on the crop, the strain of yeast present during the process, and conditions. So basically it can vary a lot.
We ferment CO2 + H2 rather than syngas (CO / CO + H2 / CO + H2 + CO2) but yes gas fermentation is not new technology.
Like traditional chemical processes which use metal catalysts, superior catalyst design improves the performance and ultimately the economics of the process.
Edit: I should have mentioned that it's not just the catalyst that has been improved, the design of the process itself has been improved. So upstream (gasification) and the design of the bioreactor also impact how well the process works.
We are building the frameworks so that we will be able to take advantage of this but haven't yet. Can message me via the webform on our website? I would love to learn more about HPC, my understanding is limited.
From my understanding, OER occurs when splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen and can happen in biological and electrochemical systems. In the former plants use energy from sunlight to extract the electrons from water whereas in the latter, energy from electricity is used. In our process we use hydrogen that is oroduced elsewhere, it isn't part of our technology so we don't run into this issue.
Multiple solutions are needed to address climate change and CCU is just one of many levers we can use to decarbonise our industries. Sure CCU isn't as direct as DAC, but coupling CCU with biogenic sources of CO2 can create a carbon negative process if the product doesn't degrade. Solvents may not fit the bill for storing carbon for centuries, but plastics do.
The more immediate impact for CCU is the emissions reduction achieved via displacement of fossil derived solvents.
I would describe hydrogen as an energy carrier rather than an energy source. Hydrogen is always made from something else, and the energy is either provided by that something else, or indirectly from another source, or a combination of both.
If you use an electrolyser to make hydrogen from water, your energy source is actually the electricity used to drive that reaction. The energy is stored as hydrogen gas.
Large bodies of water are great passive systems to capture CO2. For the outdoors, and if using sunlight is the energy source, algae and seaweed are definitely great candidates for capturing CO2.
Unfortunately your idea wouldn't work for our microorganisms as it is anaerobic, so it would die if exposed to air. But I like your idea for using sunlight to improve the growing conditions of algae + using automation for harvesting!
If you do some back of napkin math on petrochemicals, which accounts for roughly 20% of oil usage there is a huge opportunity to displace petroleum using recycled carbon.
Global oil consumption is roughly 100 million barrels / day (today). 1 barrel is 160 kg, so annual petrochemical volumes are roughly 1.1 billion tons of product (20 million * 160 kg / 1000 (to get tons) * 365 days). That is at todays consumption. Chemical usage is expected to grow over the next several decades. Of course this is ignoring recycling carbon into e-fuels. There will be a need for those too.
In terms of actually scaling the technology, heavy industry is widespread and is a source of large scale point source emissions, ranging from as little as 10,000 tons of CO2 emissions / year all the way up to 10 million tons of CO2 / year. It is all about retrofitting these industrial sites with this type of technology to supply local markets the chemicals they need. This ignores the other sources of carbon that will become available via carbon capture (stationary or mobile) as well as direct air capture. It's tough to imagine exponential growth, but things can be very different by 2040.
My bad! We are engineering our microorganisms which means we are assembling DNA parts into plasmids which are used to deliver the DNA into the host. So there is the design and then the actual build part before the actual testing.
Depending on what you want to do you build a different style of plasmid. If its genetic modification (ex. using CRISPR) you use one type, if it's testing a new pathway, you build another. You use software to help with the design of everything and to define and explore the solution space.
To make it high throughput we usually test things using in vitro (cell-free systems) before actually moving into the host. In vitro work has a faster DBTL cycle than in vivo work. We test strains in smaller experiments (20-100 ml) before moving to bioreactors (1-2L).
We would like to automate more and build a more robust R&D pipeline to support faster DBTL cycles, but you can be limited by the epuipment available. Doing highthroughput automated work is great for productivity, but it costs more. So has been challenging to implement everywhere we would like due to resources.
Short answer is no. The real value in our solution is going from C1 compounds like CO2 to C2 or C3 or longer chain compounds. This is the real difficulty. Methanol is still a C1 compound. Biology could do it, but it's not what it excels at.
Maersk has commissioned 8 ships to run on methanol. For context, Maersk owns 550 ships. Gives you an idea of the size of the transportation fuel problem.
This is one of the challenges we face against companies that are spinning out research that has been publicly funded for many years or on a more personal note, going up against people who came from more prestigious institutions. But we think we have identified a niche that is worth pursuing.
I think Zymergen is an interesting case study and serves as an example to companies developing 'new products'. Like most things there is no perfect solution. New products open new markets, new opportunities, and may seem less risky at the beginning, but what happened to Zymergen is an example of what can happen when rolling out new products (in this space of course). Drop in replacements for example don't face those same risks, but they have other challenges of course.