Academia Sinica researchers have discovered a way to capture carbon dioxide without using a living organism, offering a more flexible and efficient approach to removing carbon dioxide from the air.
The study published on Feb. 23 in the journal Nature Catalysis is the result of seven years of research and development, the national academy announced yesterday.
At present, biological methods are the most effective way to reduce carbon dioxide at scale by fixing carbon in cells as organisms grow, Academia Sinica said.
Photo courtesy of Academia Sinica
As photosynthesis can be slow, the researchers investigated a nonbiological way of sequestering carbon, which could theoretically then be converted into useful enzymes for reuse, it said.
The study is the second time in history that researchers have successfully created an artificial carbon sequestration cycle, after a German team published their results in 2016, Academia Sinica President James Liao (廖俊智) said.
The researchers achieved sustained operation for six hours, with a carbon fixation rate comparable to or higher than that of biological methods, the paper said.
Typical cell-based carbon fixation has three major limitations, the study said.
When the key enzyme in the carbon fixation cycle — RuBisCO — acts on oxygen, it can cause photorespiration, a process opposite to photosynthesis in which oxygen is taken in and carbon dioxide is released, it said.
Organisms can also only fix carbon while growing, while half of the carbon dioxide captured during the day is released at night, it said.
To solve the photorespiration issue, the team chose two enzymes involved in carbon fixation that are not affected by oxygen and combined them with 19 microbial enzymes, Institute of Biological Chemistry researcher Lin Po-heng (林柏亨) said.
The method only utilizes enzymes from an organism instead of the entire organism, enabling highly efficient carbon fixation regardless of a cell’s growth period or respiration, he added.
The captured carbon dioxide can also in theory be converted into common building blocks such as acetyl-CoA, pyruvate and malate, which can be used to produce a variety of raw chemicals for use in any number of petrochemical, pharmaceutical or food products, Lin said.
The Institute of Physics helped build the machine, while the Research Center for Applied Sciences helped set up opto-sensing modules to control regeneration, Academia Sinica said.
Lin was the study’s lead author and Liao was corresponding author, while center assistant research fellow Chen Chi (陳祺) and her team were coauthors.
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