About This Project

Climate change due to CO2 emission is the paramount concern and needs urgent attention. Absorption-based CO2 capture technology seems promising but is energy-intensive. Carbonic anhydrase (CA) enzyme is an important biocatalyst that can help reduce the cost of CO2 capture, but its use is hindered by its instability under industrial process conditions. Our project will help develop process conditions for an engineered CA to reduce the cost of CO2 capture.

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What is the context of this research?

Rising carbon dioxide (CO₂) emission into the atmosphere requires urgent eco-friendly mitigation strategies [1]. Point source capture (PSC) involves capturing CO₂ emissions from industries before they are released into the atmosphere. Among the different CO₂ capture technologies used for PSC, post-combustion CO₂ capture using amine solvent-based absorption of CO₂ seems promising [2][3]. The major drawback of this process is the requirement of high energy costs for solvent regeneration. Switching to different solvents such as tertiary amines, has some advantages related to the cost of regeneration but the hydration of CO₂ to bicarbonate occurs at a slower rate which adds to the operation cost.

What is the significance of this project?

Carbonic anhydrases (CAs) convert CO₂ into bicarbonate at a very high reaction rate [4]. Hence, they could reduce the cost of CO₂ capture in an industrial solvent-based setup. However, their use in industrial CO₂ capture is hindered by their instability during solvent regeneration due to the high temperature, pH and ionic strength used in the process. Therefore, it is imperative to engineer or design CAs with properties such as high stability, catalytic efficiency and longevity that make them favourable for their use in industrial pipelines.

What are the goals of the project?

We engineered a novel CA that shows >57.7% activity improvement and 17°C enhancement in thermostability when compared to an highly efficient natural CA, making it a highly stable and catalytic efficient enzyme. However, to obtain a CA that fulfills all improvement pillars, including, enhancing in-process longevity, and evaluating the stability of the CA in different solvents used in industrial CO₂ capture, we aim to focus on developing process conditions for the novel engineered enzyme for its successful translation to an industrial CO₂ capture technology. Specifically, we will focus on optimizing immobilization strategies for extendingCA longevity and assessing the impact of solvents on the catalytic efficiency and stability of the engineered CA enzyme.