Carbon dioxide is a crucial industrial gas in the right context. One of the keys to making the collection of previously vented-to-the-atmosphere CO2 a viable high-volume intervention is to make it stack up in economic terms – and that’s made especially possible when the collected CO2 is put to some value-added purpose.
Many, many companies are now going after this broad opportunity on different terms, using CO2 as a feedstock in a variety of ways, and usually with CO2-abatement incentives (or penalties for leaving it as waste) in the financial mix. But while the list of plays in this space is long and growing fast, one outfit that’s notably far along, to the extent that its first full-scale commercial project is now live, is a relatively little-known Illinois company, Synata Bio.
Synata Bio is a 45-person outfit today that has been quietly going about its business for a few years – but one that is now out in the marketplace and making strides. It has developed a fermentation process using a biocatalyst – a microorganism – that can convert a range of synthesis gases and waste gases into ethanol. And the key ingredients for the process, alongside the microbes, are CO2 and hydrogen: Synata Bio’s microbes consume CO2, and eat even more of it when a waste stream includes hydrogen.
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