Launch HN: Phase Biolabs (YC W22) – Converting CO2 to Carbon-Neutral Chemicals
90 comments
Are you picturing some scenario like: a natural-gas fired turbine plant captures CO2 with an amine stripper, that CO2 is then fed into a bioreactor to produce, say, Ethanol?
It seems to me that the energy content of the Ethanol isn't too different from the natural gas going into the plant so I don't see how you get ahead doing this... If you've got to add extra energy or divert some of the input energy to make hydrogen to fuel the reactor how do you end up ahead?
It seems to me that the energy content of the Ethanol isn't too different from the natural gas going into the plant so I don't see how you get ahead doing this... If you've got to add extra energy or divert some of the input energy to make hydrogen to fuel the reactor how do you end up ahead?
There are a couple of things at play here.
So first, if you need to do 'work', then definitely just use electricity directly to do the job, which is much more efficient.
I agree it wouldnt make sense to split natural gas (into CO2 + H2) and then recombine it back into ethanol, although oil companies would love to do this as they have billions in stranded assets in the form of natural gas.
Ideally you couple some process that generates CO2 (not from burning fossil fuels) with renewable electricity to recycle that carbon back into useful chemicals to displace petroleum derived chemicals. Two examples of this would be cement manufacture and industrial brewing. But yes you need an external energy input, like with most things.
As a side note, the impact of this depends on where you get your energy (renewable of course) and your carbon. Some companies have caught onto this. For example Unilever created a carbon 'rainbow' to separate the types of carbon. Recycling renewable carbon is the goal here.
So first, if you need to do 'work', then definitely just use electricity directly to do the job, which is much more efficient.
I agree it wouldnt make sense to split natural gas (into CO2 + H2) and then recombine it back into ethanol, although oil companies would love to do this as they have billions in stranded assets in the form of natural gas.
Ideally you couple some process that generates CO2 (not from burning fossil fuels) with renewable electricity to recycle that carbon back into useful chemicals to displace petroleum derived chemicals. Two examples of this would be cement manufacture and industrial brewing. But yes you need an external energy input, like with most things.
As a side note, the impact of this depends on where you get your energy (renewable of course) and your carbon. Some companies have caught onto this. For example Unilever created a carbon 'rainbow' to separate the types of carbon. Recycling renewable carbon is the goal here.
How do you see the scaling up to multiple gigatonnes per year?
For me that has alwayd been the hard part to understand about CCU, where is there a market large enough to absorb that volume? And where the product does not get burnt or emitted anyway in the end?
For me that has alwayd been the hard part to understand about CCU, where is there a market large enough to absorb that volume? And where the product does not get burnt or emitted anyway in the end?
The short answer is with great difficulty!
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.
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.
There is a huge amount of talk about things like this or CarbFix which all seem secondary to the "capture CO2 at some generic capture point and pump it into a saline aquifer" approach which seems to be pretty scalable.
Even though the technology is on the shelf it's not being deployed largely because there is no financial incentive to do so... Yet the widespread use of this technology really needs to be happening now if we want any of these carbon capture things to happen.
Even though the technology is on the shelf it's not being deployed largely because there is no financial incentive to do so... Yet the widespread use of this technology really needs to be happening now if we want any of these carbon capture things to happen.
I find it ironic that carbon capture and storage technology was originally (might be wrong here) developed for enhanced oil recovery (EOR).
But yes we really need better systems to incentivize the capture and storage or utilisation of CO2. Carbon taxes a great place to start.
But yes we really need better systems to incentivize the capture and storage or utilisation of CO2. Carbon taxes a great place to start.
You can drill in Texas and find CO2 underground and people used this for advanced oil recovery before it was captured at power plants. It is a use of CO2 that people will pay for.
Didn't know that! I assumed it was always captured elsewhere.
As we find new profitable uses for CO2 the demand for it will increase, which should help create new carbon value chains.
As we find new profitable uses for CO2 the demand for it will increase, which should help create new carbon value chains.
> So first, if you need to do 'work', then definitely just use electricity directly to do the job, which is much more efficient.
Pardon me but this doesn’t sound right. If you want to generate heat, burning natural gas is going to be a lot more efficient overall than first burning natural gas at a power plant then transmitting electricity to your facility to convert it to heat. Similarly with rotational energy, etc. Your second point stands: if you power your process by solar, wind, or hydro you could get ahead of CO2.
Pardon me but this doesn’t sound right. If you want to generate heat, burning natural gas is going to be a lot more efficient overall than first burning natural gas at a power plant then transmitting electricity to your facility to convert it to heat. Similarly with rotational energy, etc. Your second point stands: if you power your process by solar, wind, or hydro you could get ahead of CO2.
I may have misused the term 'work' here. I was trying to describe the displacement of an object through the actions of something like a motor. You can achieve that by burning fuels (combustion engine), or steam, or an electric motor. I was trying to allude to the latter being the most efficient.
No I know what you mean by “work”, my degree is in physics. What I think is not clear is what you mean by “efficient”.
Gotcha, I reread what you wrote andit makes more sense to me now.
What are your thoughts on using renewable electricity for heating applications as a way to displace burning of fossil fuels?
What are your thoughts on using renewable electricity for heating applications as a way to displace burning of fossil fuels?
I mean obviously if you use something like solar or wind it will not produce CO2 so any CO2 your process extracts will be a net gain. If you use it to make ethanol that then gets burned you’ll just be putting CO2 back into the air. If you make construction bricks with it, you won’t.
Solar can also be used to heat things more directly than first converting to electricity (and taking a big loss on that), but then you really are subject to when the sun shines. But if you put your facility in a desert in Arizona you’ll probably do quite a bit with a set of mirrors used to heat specific objects.
Solar can also be used to heat things more directly than first converting to electricity (and taking a big loss on that), but then you really are subject to when the sun shines. But if you put your facility in a desert in Arizona you’ll probably do quite a bit with a set of mirrors used to heat specific objects.
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 on this but my understanding is that a fossil file plant wastes something like 60% of its energy as lost heat. There is also transmission losses. Whereas an oil or gas heater can get to like 97% efficiency in heating water when on site. Hell, you could get heat for free by just removing it from the smoke stack of a coal fired power plant.
This is fantastic! I'd never considered this pathway for CCUS, but it sounds promising. Biology has evolved some pretty interesting solutions for low-energy CO2 utilization :)
I have tons of questions, but my first is: How do you measure the products that come out of your bioreactor?
I have tons of questions, but my first is: How do you measure the products that come out of your bioreactor?
We take a small sample out the bioreactor (1-2 milliliters) and run it through HPLC (high pressure liquid chromatography). This is manual and labour intensive. There are newer techniques like raman spectroscopy which measure products in real time.
Congrats on the launch! When talking about pH control in your demo video, a thought occurred to me; what are the chemical processes you'd need to scale this technology towards making a global impact,and what are their bottlenecks? For example, there's been lots of coverage on Lithium supply being a significant issue as more countries move to mandate electric vehicles. What's the Lithium of your process/industry, if any?
Thank you!
We are going to need low cost green hydrogen. Existing electrolyser technology uses precious metals and so they are expensive/current limiting factor. However there are lots of startups working on bringing to market electrolysers that use non precious metals.
In terms of chemical processes, fermentation is quite simple. In addition to the bioreactor you need a device to control the gas inputs and you need some downstream processing (product extraction). For ethanol distillation is most commonly used but there are newer lower energetically demanding techniques that can be used for extraction. Not all products can be distilled out though, so extraction is somewhat product dependent.
We are going to need low cost green hydrogen. Existing electrolyser technology uses precious metals and so they are expensive/current limiting factor. However there are lots of startups working on bringing to market electrolysers that use non precious metals.
In terms of chemical processes, fermentation is quite simple. In addition to the bioreactor you need a device to control the gas inputs and you need some downstream processing (product extraction). For ethanol distillation is most commonly used but there are newer lower energetically demanding techniques that can be used for extraction. Not all products can be distilled out though, so extraction is somewhat product dependent.
What is your read on how quickly electrolyser companies will be able to scale? Historically they were only used industrially in very niche applications (submarines, some space applications), so their production was in the ~MW order of magnitude. Going towards GW and TW scale is difficult when you were previously operating on bigger budget, longer lead projects. Do you have any particular companies you're keeping an eye on?
I am optimistic that with the interest, government policy and both public and private funding, we can achieve the necessary scale required. It will probably take longer than the optimists predict and less time than the pessimists think.
edit: some interesting hydrogen companies
https://www.sunhydrogen.com/technology (like a solar panel but for hydrogen, uses light energy to split water into H2 + O2)
https://www.alchemr.com/technology/ (electrolysers that use non precious metals)
https://www.h2pro.co/technology (membrane free electrolysers)
There are also several companies developing 'turquoise' hydrogen, which is a plasma based technology. I have no connection to this website, but the first few paragraphs it lists a few companies in this space: https://www.h2-view.com/story/four-more-technologies-for-tur...
edit: some interesting hydrogen companies
https://www.sunhydrogen.com/technology (like a solar panel but for hydrogen, uses light energy to split water into H2 + O2)
https://www.alchemr.com/technology/ (electrolysers that use non precious metals)
https://www.h2pro.co/technology (membrane free electrolysers)
There are also several companies developing 'turquoise' hydrogen, which is a plasma based technology. I have no connection to this website, but the first few paragraphs it lists a few companies in this space: https://www.h2-view.com/story/four-more-technologies-for-tur...
Interesting concept -- whats the stoichiometric ratio of CO2:H2 for the reaction and energy balance?
I imagine you would have to be source pure inexpensive green hydrogen in order for the CO2 balance to be net negative/neutral if that is a goal.
Best of luck - always glad to hear about novel approaches/companies.
I imagine you would have to be source pure inexpensive green hydrogen in order for the CO2 balance to be net negative/neutral if that is a goal.
Best of luck - always glad to hear about novel approaches/companies.
Thank you!
The stoichiometric equation is:
2CO2 + 6H2 > C2H5OH (ethanol) + 3 H2O [∆G -107.4 +/- 36.8 kJ/mol]
You're absolutely right, we require low cost green hydrogen (electricity). The carbon balance depends a bit on what kind of carbon you use.
The stoichiometric equation is:
2CO2 + 6H2 > C2H5OH (ethanol) + 3 H2O [∆G -107.4 +/- 36.8 kJ/mol]
You're absolutely right, we require low cost green hydrogen (electricity). The carbon balance depends a bit on what kind of carbon you use.
Thanks - yup sourcing the hydrogen will probably be tricky for the next couple years but Im guessing it will take a bit of time for you guys to scale up so hopefully you grow at the same speed of the green hydrogen market.
Is the core innovation for your company around the bioreactor structure or the chemistry? I.e. are there other chemical reactions that you are looking at building on?
Is the core innovation for your company around the bioreactor structure or the chemistry? I.e. are there other chemical reactions that you are looking at building on?
I am cheering for the hydrogen companies, we need them!
Core of the innovation is around the engineering of the microorganism. One way to think of it is that it is similar to chip designs. In the 80s (I think) ARM designed chips that had super low power consumption. They patented that design and those chip designs are why we enjoy better battery life on our devices today. We have a similar approach in terms of where our IP resides.
In terms of chemical reactions, we can in theory produce almost any chemical compound found in nature directly, and all chemicals in multiple steps. Our process is anaerobic so we can't do reactions (yet) that require an oxidation step. For context, there are more than 200,000 organic compounds found in the biosphere.
Core of the innovation is around the engineering of the microorganism. One way to think of it is that it is similar to chip designs. In the 80s (I think) ARM designed chips that had super low power consumption. They patented that design and those chip designs are why we enjoy better battery life on our devices today. We have a similar approach in terms of where our IP resides.
In terms of chemical reactions, we can in theory produce almost any chemical compound found in nature directly, and all chemicals in multiple steps. Our process is anaerobic so we can't do reactions (yet) that require an oxidation step. For context, there are more than 200,000 organic compounds found in the biosphere.
Neat!
Because you're here, and partly out of vicarious self-interest (my kid is about to graduate with a biochem bachelors and is looking around at industry work before heading back to grad school):
What's the day-to-day work here look like? I have a good idea of what most software companies, and even a lot of hardware companies, do. I have no notion of what line engineers and tech workers at a company like this are doing. Is it mostly modeling work? Materials engineering stuff? What's the software stack here, if any?
Because you're here, and partly out of vicarious self-interest (my kid is about to graduate with a biochem bachelors and is looking around at industry work before heading back to grad school):
What's the day-to-day work here look like? I have a good idea of what most software companies, and even a lot of hardware companies, do. I have no notion of what line engineers and tech workers at a company like this are doing. Is it mostly modeling work? Materials engineering stuff? What's the software stack here, if any?
The day to day in lab really depends on the type of lab you are working in.
If you are working in analytics, running assays (tests) on things like blood or urine samples (hospitals or clinical trials) or a more recent example would be a covid clinic, the day can be very monotonous. There is a lot of paperwork involved due to the regulations you need to adhere to (GMP, GCP, GLP). This is one of the reasons I didn't like working in pharma. It's better now to things becoming digital, but the point is the work can be very repetitive.
If you are working in an R&D lab things are more dynamic. You might be running similar experiments from one day to the next, but the context is always different. Even though you hit a roadblock and get stuck for a day, a week or a month, as things progress the type of work will change as the project evolves/progresses.
You can work in industry in either of the above environments, both provide valuable experience. Industry is stricter and more rigid than academic labs.
Day to day it's still very hands on. Things are progressing such that you spend less and less time in the lab as things become automated and the workflow becomes digitised, but you still need to go into the lab even if it is to setup the robot. We don't yet have robots to control the robots, although maybe sooner than we think. At high level, most R&D lab employ some sort of design, build, test, learn (DBTL) workflow, even if they don't call it that. Depending on what the focus is, each step in that cycle will be slightly different.
The amount of software is growing every day for all applications. You have everything from basic software like Lab Information Management Systems (LIMS) to help with basic ops to more complex software to help plan workflows and analyse data (Synthace) to much more specific software like protein modelling (Rosetta) or genetic manipulation (Geneious) and the list goes on. I am barely scratching the surface here. I regret not having more training in python.
edit: not a perfect article, but to give you more of a flavor for software in synbio/biotech, check this out: https://www.builtwithbiology.com/read/the-synbio-stack-part-...
If you are working in analytics, running assays (tests) on things like blood or urine samples (hospitals or clinical trials) or a more recent example would be a covid clinic, the day can be very monotonous. There is a lot of paperwork involved due to the regulations you need to adhere to (GMP, GCP, GLP). This is one of the reasons I didn't like working in pharma. It's better now to things becoming digital, but the point is the work can be very repetitive.
If you are working in an R&D lab things are more dynamic. You might be running similar experiments from one day to the next, but the context is always different. Even though you hit a roadblock and get stuck for a day, a week or a month, as things progress the type of work will change as the project evolves/progresses.
You can work in industry in either of the above environments, both provide valuable experience. Industry is stricter and more rigid than academic labs.
Day to day it's still very hands on. Things are progressing such that you spend less and less time in the lab as things become automated and the workflow becomes digitised, but you still need to go into the lab even if it is to setup the robot. We don't yet have robots to control the robots, although maybe sooner than we think. At high level, most R&D lab employ some sort of design, build, test, learn (DBTL) workflow, even if they don't call it that. Depending on what the focus is, each step in that cycle will be slightly different.
The amount of software is growing every day for all applications. You have everything from basic software like Lab Information Management Systems (LIMS) to help with basic ops to more complex software to help plan workflows and analyse data (Synthace) to much more specific software like protein modelling (Rosetta) or genetic manipulation (Geneious) and the list goes on. I am barely scratching the surface here. I regret not having more training in python.
edit: not a perfect article, but to give you more of a flavor for software in synbio/biotech, check this out: https://www.builtwithbiology.com/read/the-synbio-stack-part-...
This is the industry at large (and thank you so much for that!) but I'm actually really curious about what the work at Phase looks like in particular; I assume it's mostly not running assays on urine samples. :)
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.
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.
Thanks! This is great stuff. Best of luck to all of you!
Thank you for your hard work David! Do I understand correctly that the source of energy for the conversion is (mostly) the hydrogen?
I've been interested in if we could use large bodies of water (like lakes or ponds) to both get a lot of interaction with CO2 from the air, and get energy from the sun to capture carbon. Do you think fermentation could work outside, or would we need a more resilient organism like algae or even seaweed?
My idea is to float a dark membrane on top of the water, with a thin layer of water on top. The dark membrane heats the water, sustaining the algae, and then the algae get robotically harvested. Could that work for your organism?
I've been interested in if we could use large bodies of water (like lakes or ponds) to both get a lot of interaction with CO2 from the air, and get energy from the sun to capture carbon. Do you think fermentation could work outside, or would we need a more resilient organism like algae or even seaweed?
My idea is to float a dark membrane on top of the water, with a thin layer of water on top. The dark membrane heats the water, sustaining the algae, and then the algae get robotically harvested. Could that work for your organism?
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 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!
I know basically nothing about biology/fermentation, but from the tiny bit I do know by having made yogurt and alcohol, and out of curiosity: does this use bacteria, yeast, or some other beast that I don't know about?
We use an autotrophic microorganism called an acetogen. Autotrophic means it can use inorganic carbon to feed itself. Plants are another example of an autotroph. Humans are heterotrophs, meaning we depend on other sources for food.
Do these organisms live in an solution of water an ethanol? What is peak ethanol concentration before they start dying?
Is there a possible future where these critters could eventually turn a clean CO2 source into recreationally drinkable fluid?
Is there a possible future where these critters could eventually turn a clean CO2 source into recreationally drinkable fluid?
They don't live in ethanol and water but it has been tested and they can survive quite high concentrations of ethanol.
And yes they could convert CO2 into recreational drinking fluid, and I learned from someone else in this thread that it would be totally legal!
And yes they could convert CO2 into recreational drinking fluid, and I learned from someone else in this thread that it would be totally legal!
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LanzaTech, a competitor in this space, just made a big announcement that they've had excellent results with a scaled up bioreactor that "eats" co2 and makes acetone or isopropanol. They claim a 120L bioreactor (compared to the 1.5L mentioned here) and high yield, both of which they say is an indication they are ready for large scale.
https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/reprogrammed-bacterium-t...
https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/reprogrammed-bacterium-t...
Lanzatech are an amazing company. They are pioneers/trailblazers in the field and I have a lot of respect for them. They have demonstrated that they gas fermentation works at scale. There are advantages and disadvantages to their approach, like all technologies / solutions.
Typo:
> You can do two things with carbon: you can capture it, or you can use it. Both are hard, but the latter is harder, mainly because carbon dioxide is so small.
You can either store (CCS: "Carbon Capture and Storage") or/and use (CCU: "Carbon Capture and Utilization") it.
Fixing the typo:
> You can do two things with carbon: you can store it, or you can use it. Both are hard, but the latter is harder, mainly because carbon dioxide is so small.
Also, probably wouldn't say that it's hard because CO2 is small. Instead, probably just say because [it's got a low enthalpy](https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/30089/why-is-th... ). Otherwise, it'd be like saying that water's hard-to-use because H2O is small, or that gold's hard-to-use because Au is small.
> You can do two things with carbon: you can capture it, or you can use it. Both are hard, but the latter is harder, mainly because carbon dioxide is so small.
You can either store (CCS: "Carbon Capture and Storage") or/and use (CCU: "Carbon Capture and Utilization") it.
Fixing the typo:
> You can do two things with carbon: you can store it, or you can use it. Both are hard, but the latter is harder, mainly because carbon dioxide is so small.
Also, probably wouldn't say that it's hard because CO2 is small. Instead, probably just say because [it's got a low enthalpy](https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/30089/why-is-th... ). Otherwise, it'd be like saying that water's hard-to-use because H2O is small, or that gold's hard-to-use because Au is small.
You're absolutely right regarding enthalpy and thanks for fixing the typos. I am still trying to find the best way to communicate what we are doing.
> I am still trying to find the best way to communicate what we are doing.
Hah.. yeah.. I like to remain anonymous, so it's difficult to discuss my own background and experience directly, but I fully get what you mean.
I've stood in front of conferences at places like AIChE and in front of the upper-staff at some of the world's largest companies and delivered talks on topics that I consider to be the basics of this field, and there seemed to be surprisingly superficial comprehension. It was weird, and communication seemed like a huge barrier.
A lot of work in this field may be more social in getting folks to accept and support stuff.
Hah.. yeah.. I like to remain anonymous, so it's difficult to discuss my own background and experience directly, but I fully get what you mean.
I've stood in front of conferences at places like AIChE and in front of the upper-staff at some of the world's largest companies and delivered talks on topics that I consider to be the basics of this field, and there seemed to be surprisingly superficial comprehension. It was weird, and communication seemed like a huge barrier.
A lot of work in this field may be more social in getting folks to accept and support stuff.
I definitely underappreciated how important communication is.
Fascinating indeed - good luck!
Saw some talks years ago by Daniel Nocera, in which they did water splitting and fed hydrogen to engineered bacteria to make more complex products. Cool stuff - I'd imagine the end products, fuels in their case, would still be way too expensive.
There's interesting stuff going on in modifying microbes to make cannabinoids and other natural products. Would be kinda cool to combine these two :)
Saw some talks years ago by Daniel Nocera, in which they did water splitting and fed hydrogen to engineered bacteria to make more complex products. Cool stuff - I'd imagine the end products, fuels in their case, would still be way too expensive.
There's interesting stuff going on in modifying microbes to make cannabinoids and other natural products. Would be kinda cool to combine these two :)
Thank you!
I agree, Daniel Nocera's team have done some really cool research and you're right that renewable fuels in general would be too expensive. I would argue that the cost of fossil fuels are artificially low because their current cost doesn't account for the environmental damage they cause. If we had to pay their true cost, the difference might not be so great.
I like to dream and so our long term ambition is to try and make complex molcules like cannabinoids directly from CO2, but we're some ways off.
I agree, Daniel Nocera's team have done some really cool research and you're right that renewable fuels in general would be too expensive. I would argue that the cost of fossil fuels are artificially low because their current cost doesn't account for the environmental damage they cause. If we had to pay their true cost, the difference might not be so great.
I like to dream and so our long term ambition is to try and make complex molcules like cannabinoids directly from CO2, but we're some ways off.
So much this! We are seeing artificially low costs because the hidden costs (environmental and health) are split onto the rest of the society.
We need to campaign to make these costs clear and keep companies accountable
We need to campaign to make these costs clear and keep companies accountable
100% agree. I think carbon taxes are really important here.
"unfortunately CO2-based ethanol cannot be legally sold as a beverage"
Why not?
Edit: A little searching here seems to say that synthetic ethanol can be used as a food ingredient and must be accurately labeled. The policy doesn't say that it can't be used in beverages. However, I assume that it's use in many beverages are defacto banned as synthetic alcohol is not part of the tradition grain bill. I don't see why it can't be used in the liquors or a new type of beverage.
https://www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/search-fda-guidan...
Another edit: it appears that FDA lists ethanol as GRAS for general food product use, and that TTB approves the use of GRAS ingredients. If you use synthetic flavors, it looks like that affects the labeling. I assume you would just have to label the alcohol consistent with it's source.
Why not?
Edit: A little searching here seems to say that synthetic ethanol can be used as a food ingredient and must be accurately labeled. The policy doesn't say that it can't be used in beverages. However, I assume that it's use in many beverages are defacto banned as synthetic alcohol is not part of the tradition grain bill. I don't see why it can't be used in the liquors or a new type of beverage.
https://www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/search-fda-guidan...
Another edit: it appears that FDA lists ethanol as GRAS for general food product use, and that TTB approves the use of GRAS ingredients. If you use synthetic flavors, it looks like that affects the labeling. I assume you would just have to label the alcohol consistent with it's source.
Ethanol produced via non fermentation methods tends to have impurities like methanol or the separation process to purify the ethanol requires other not good compounds to bust the azeotropes. Everclear is 95% alcohol because that is the best you can do with distillation. You can 100% ethanol, but it has a trace amount of benzene so it can not be sold/consumed as food.
This ethanol is produced via fermentation, though. Just not fermentation of plant matter. The OP uses the word "fermentation" several times.
We don't normally think of the containers where wine or sour mash are fermented as bioreactors, but they are.
We don't normally think of the containers where wine or sour mash are fermented as bioreactors, but they are.
Right, but the source product is sugar a C6 compound, and the fermentation pathwasy removes carbon atoms. This process is building up from C1 so methanol is a possible side product. Or at least I bet that is the concern
Ethanol produced by fermentation also contains impurities and methanol. The FDA/ATF say in the link that the majority of vinegar and alcohol used in food cone from synthetic sources.
Ethanol produced via fermentation tends to have methanol as well though. IIRC wine has a fair bit in it.
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.
Methanol and other byproducts do vary based on strains, conditions, etc. Generally, methanol is not an issue in things like wine because it's not produced in large enough quantities, even when conditions are poor. A treatment for methanol poisoning is actually ethanol (and likely some NAC). Only when distilling is methanol concentrated enough to cause problems. When done correctly, the distillation process separates the methanol from the other distillates at specific temperatures. Usually the heads and tails of a distillation run are thrown away. I believe it's the head that has the lions share of methanol.
Current regulations (in Europe, and I believe the US is the same) is that only ethanol produced using yeast-based fermentation of crops can be sold for human consumption.
I edited my comment after doing a search. FDA does permit synthetic alcohol in food and food chemical production. It doesn't say that it can't be part of a beverage, which is food. Although there could be other regulations that supercede this.
It doesn't really matter, since beverages overall require very little CO2. So even if it were fully legal and practical, it wouldn't make much of a difference.
This thread is about using the alcohol synthesized from CO2 to create alcoholic beverages, not using the CO2 to carbonate beverages.
I am really interested in work of this nature since my phd chemist days. One of the key challenges I've seen in similar systems is the oxygen evolution reaction due to the 4e- required to complete the process. How have you resolved this in your system, and do you think this could help other open problems that seem to suffer from OER bottleneck?
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.
my apologies this was intended to be a reply to the thread on https://www.sunhydrogen.com/technology. Sorry for the confusion!
I have two questions.
1. How efficient is this process, i.e. how much ethanol does your lab setup produce per litre of reactor volume and hour?
2. Is the need of hydrogen a problem, i.e. is the required amount of hydrogen for real world usage at scale easily available or would this require significant additional hydrogen production capacity?
EDIT: Number two has mostly been answered in another comment.
1. How efficient is this process, i.e. how much ethanol does your lab setup produce per litre of reactor volume and hour?
2. Is the need of hydrogen a problem, i.e. is the required amount of hydrogen for real world usage at scale easily available or would this require significant additional hydrogen production capacity?
EDIT: Number two has mostly been answered in another comment.
Process efficiency can be measured in different ways. I can't give you a number on energy efficiency yet but what I can say is that the carbon efficiency of the process can get close to 100% yield. We aren't there yet for a number of reasons, but to provide details, two things it is related to are mass transfer (how much of the gas is dissolved into the water) and the residence time (how long the gases are in the bioreactor). With our current setup, neither of these has been optimised so the yield isn't great. But this is part of developing the process. We will soon be switching to better bioreactor designs to improve on these fronts.
Your other comment relates to productivity and can be expressed as space time yield (STY). Like the above we need to improve on this and is part of our next steps.
Your other comment relates to productivity and can be expressed as space time yield (STY). Like the above we need to improve on this and is part of our next steps.
Capturing CO2 and not permanently removing it from the carbon cycle doesn't seem like it helps much with the climate situation, apart from reducing the conversion of oil/gas to CO2. Beverages probably go back to the atmosphere relatively soon. How long do solvents last before they return to the atmosphere as CO2?
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.
The more immediate impact for CCU is the emissions reduction achieved via displacement of fossil derived solvents.
How does CCU via plants compare with CCU via your product?
Can you output methanol? Maersk is commissioning some new ships that are methanol powered; if they succeed their requirements alone will probably exceed current worldwide methanol production 10x.
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.
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.
Remember: Zymergen has the bulk of patents here, a ridiculous amount of know-how, and actual factory-level scaling beyond 1.5 liter bioreactors -- but they're now worth less than pennies on the dollar of their initial investment.
Business issues aside, micro-organisms always produce a lot more stuff than what you want, and they behave differently depending on the micro-environment, and of course they mutate...
It's kind of hard to go up against DARPA projects and national labs that have been doing this for decades.
Business issues aside, micro-organisms always produce a lot more stuff than what you want, and they behave differently depending on the micro-environment, and of course they mutate...
It's kind of hard to go up against DARPA projects and national labs that have been doing this for decades.
Absolutely it is hard! No denying that.
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.
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.
Congrats! Be sure to check out AirMiners Slack where there are dozens of other startups working on building new carbon solutions for a new industry and eventually a new economy. Some of your YC batchmates are members ;)
https://airminers.org/
https://airminers.org/
Thank you very much for the suggestion!
Fascinating. Question: do you use any HPC or ML modeling in your work? Because if so we should talk.
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.
lvs(1)
We’ve built a lab-scale prototype that is a 1.5L bioreactor with a microorganism inside that 'eats' carbon dioxide and hydrogen gas, converting them into chemicals as it grows. Here's a demo video I just made for HN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUIT3RUeUPE. We are currently making ethanol in the lab but unfortunately CO2-based ethanol cannot be legally sold as a beverage, so industrial solvents it is :)
You can do two things with carbon: you can capture it, or you can use it. Both are hard, but the latter is harder, mainly because carbon dioxide is so small.
Capturing CO2 is usually done by attaching it to something else, usually another molecule, which is how we can extract it from a dilute gas stream or 'pull it' out of the air. But the CO2 molecule is only temporarily transformed.
Using CO2 is a different ball game, usually referred to as CCU (carbon capture and utilization). For this you need to permanently convert the molecular structure itself, and since you are working with extremely tiny pieces of matter, you need extremely precise machinery.
The challenge with converting CO2 is doing it efficiently. It needs to happen with as little energy as possible and to be as precise as possible. If you want to convert CO2 into X, but you also produce Y, and Z, that is a problem which will show up in the cost. Our solution is bio-based CCU, but there are also electrochemical and thermochemical technologies, each with advantages and disadvantages. And there are other bio-based approaches, such as making trees more efficient (e.g. Living Carbon W20). All are valid strategies.
In biology, CCU is known as carbon fixation. During my PhD I was engineering microbes to convert wastes into renewable chemicals and fuels, so I began to study biochemical carbon pathways, which led me to carbon fixation. I began to realize how important carbon fixation is at a macro level (carbon cycle) and how the process works, but also that it is extremely inefficient and can be optimized. For example, the trees in your garden don’t grow very fast. This is due to photosynthesis being 2-4% efficient. I’ve always wanted to start a startup and that has always been in the back of my mind, so I did things that I enjoyed that could also help towards reaching that goal, which led me to this.
Advances in synthetic biology mean we can do things that weren't possible 20-30 years ago. The amount of tinkering that we can do has substantially increased (and costs have dropped), and our understanding has grown due to a rise in data and analytics. We can borrow strategies that have worked in the past in other fields and apply them in new ways.
Since biological carbon fixation is precise, but very inefficient, our approach is to take that precision and enhance it using synthetic biology into a process that is efficient, scalable, and productive enough for industrial application. We're using microorganisms that can naturally fix carbon, and transforming them into mini factories. Our microorganisms are 7x more energy efficient than naturally occurring plants or algae and in theory can produce almost any molecule found in nature directly from CO2.
Carbon fixation is catalysed by a carbon fixation (biochemical) pathway, which is simply a set of enzymes that catalyse a sequence of steps/reactions. The enzymes attach electrons and hydrogen ions onto the CO2 molecule, while removing the oxygen, one step at a time. This process can be called reverse combustion, but whereas combustion is uncontrolled and explosive (literally), carbon fixation is highly controlled. It’s a stepwise progression from a single CO2 molecule, adding hydrogen/electrons one at a time and eventually carbon (going from 1C -> 2C, then 3C etc.) to get to your target product. Enzymes are the perfect molecular machines for this as precision is their speciality.
Our plan is to initially sell our technology to CO2 emitters so that they can reduce emissions and make money by converting a problem/cost (emissions) into new revenue. The technology scales to the size of the emitter. The cost is very different for a company that emits 50,000 tons per year vs 500,000 tons per year. We have some early estimates based on some economic modelling we’ve done.
We are at an early stage and have a long way to go but we have big ambitions for using CCU technology to decarbonise heavy industry, make sustainable chemicals and transition towards a circular economy.
Fermentation processes are well understood, easily scalable and easy to operate. We think gas fermentation can be easily deployed around the world to convert/recycle CO2 into sustainable products and Phase is aiming to use it to recycle emissions on the gigaton scale by 2040.
I hope this short summary provides new or renewed interest in the age-old process of fermentation, something that has been with us for millennia (my family has been making homemade wine for many years). I'd love to discuss any of these topics with you!