TWELVE BENEFIT CORPORATION — Department of Energy SBIR Phase I: 16b

Description

At scale, using renewable electricity to recycle waste CO2 emissions to make a feedstock for biological processes could significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provide an alternate carbon and energy source for the bioeconomy- Utilizing waste CO2 and low-cost renewable energy would reduce the bioeconomy’s current reliance on land and water use to cultivate biomass through inefficient photosynthesis- Moreover, by electrochemical conversion of CO2 provides a means of utilizing excess renewable electricity during periods of overgeneration- An efficient, cost-effective, and modular reactor for electrochemical reduction of CO2 to fermentation feedstocks is needed to make this a reality- Using only water and electricity as inputs, CO2 conversion has been demonstrated to produce over 16 different fuels and chemicals, but state- of-the-art conversion efficiencies are low and limited to non-economic scientific reactor designs- Biological processes for conversion of syngas to valuable chemicals are emerging, and some have reached full commercial deployment- The proposed effort aims to show the commercial viability of electrochemical CO2 conversion to fermentation feedstocks, and then biological conversion from feedstock to bioproducts- The ability of Opus 12’s prototype reactor to convert CO2 and water to various syngas ratios will be evaluated, and subsequently various syngas ratios will be tested in a gas fermentation process to produce isopropanol- By performing these tests, we can determine the operating conditions for the most economically and environmentally viable process-