Artificial ocean carbon recycling system converts seawater CO2 into valuable chemicals

Oceans absorb about one-third of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, but removing the dissolved carbon from oceans and converting it into useful products remain a significant challenge. No existing system has successfully integrated direct ocean capture (DOC) with the direct conversion of CO2 into a valuable chemical feedstock.

In a study published in Nature Catalysis, a team led by GAO Xiang from the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, along with XIA Chuan from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, developed an artificial ocean carbon recycling system that captures CO2 from seawater and directly converts it into succinic acid.

The system showed exceptional performance. The five-chamber reactor continuously extracted CO2 from natural seawater sourced from Shenzhen Bay, China, for over 530 hours, achieving a carbon capture efficiency of 70%. The estimated cost for the capture was approximately $230 per metric ton of CO2, which is competitive with existing state-of-the-art carbon capture technologies. By incorporating different engineered microbes, the proposed system can be tailored to produce a range of valuable industrial chemicals, such as lactic acid, alanine, and 1,4-butanediol. This study demonstrates a sustainable strategy for upcycling ocean-derived CO2, and opens new avenues for electrochemically driven biochemical synthesis.

Source: Eurek Alert!