Whenever I start to feel like the challenge of preventing climate change might just be insurmountable — this happens often as I read reports at work on the scale of carbon reduction needed — it’s a welcome news to hear that some hair-brained scientist/engineer has broken assumed technical barriers by employing a completely novel method.
Well, novel if you don’t count the fact that evolution invented this technique first.
A company called Carbozyme is finishing lab tests to mimic the method used by our bodies for transporting CO2 by applying it to the challenge of capturing and sequestering CO2 from coal power plants.
As cells pump CO2 produced during respiration into the blood, the enzyme carbonic anhydrase converts the gas into bicarbonate for easier transport to the lungs. There the same enzyme works in reverse, turning the molecules back into the CO2 gas you exhale. This action could play the critical role of selectively capturing CO2 from mixed gas emissions for later sequestration.
The company Carbozyme is finishing up lab tests of a system that consists of millions of microscale, porous tubes coated with a synthetic version of the enzyme. As a mixture of smokestack gases passes through the tubes, the enzyme pulls CO2 from the mix and turns it into bicarbonate and back, isolating CO2 so it could be pumped underground and stored in layers of basalt rock. Based on lab tests and models, the system should use about a third less energy than other methods while avoiding the hazardous chemicals typically used to grab CO2.
via Human Blood May Hold the Secret to Clean Coal | Popular Science.
So cool. Don’t give up on this challenge just yet.
