DECEMBER, 2015
Transforming pollution into products
Greenhouse gases (GHG) like CO2 threaten both environmental health and economic prosperity. But new
research supported by the Biological Greenhouse Gas Management Program of Climate Change Emissions
Management Corporation, collaboratively delivered by Alberta Innovates Bio Solutions, could hold the key not
only to managing these emissions but also to profiting from them.
Dr. Carlo
Montemagno,
Director of the
Ingenuity Lab, is
pioneering an
artificial
photosynthesis
process that
transforms CO2
into valuable
chemicals.
Source: Darren
Jacknisky,
Bluefish Studios
Montemagno explains that the system is a close imitation of
natural photosynthesis, in which plants convert light into
thechemical energy they need to grow. In the artificial version,
photosynthesis occurs within a reactor, not a leaf, but just like
its natural counterpart, it combines natural enzymes, proteins,
and sunlight to convert CO2 emissions into organic chemicals.
By the end of the two-year project, he and his team will have
produced a pilot-scale reactor, small enough to fit in the back
of a pickup truck. The next stage will be to scale up the
process and pilot it in an industrial setting.
It changes CO2 from being a pollutant to a resource,”
says Montemagno, who directs the Ingenuity Lab at the
University of Alberta. “The process will create highvalue chemical products for the petrochemical sector.
Renowned nanotechnology expert Dr. Carlo Montemagno
spent more than a decade creating a process that uses the
principles of photosynthesis to break down CO2. Now, he is
leading a two-year project to create a scalable engineering
system that uses this process to transform industrial GHGs
into useful chemical products.
“It changes CO2 from being a pollutant to a resource,” says
Montemagno, who directs the Ingenuity Lab at the University
of Alberta. The process will create high-value chemical
products for the petrochemical sector. To date, he and his
colleagues have identified 42 different chemicals they could
potentially manufacture from industrial GHGs.
ALBERTA INNOVATES BIO SOLUTIONS
But at any scale, the system is easy on the planet. The reactor
will be powered with light or solar energy, and is driven with
relatively tiny amounts of the primary enzyme, RuBisCO.
“With just one litre of RuBisCO—about the size of a large
bottle of water—the reactor can transform over 266 tonnes per
year of CO2 into products we can sell,” he says. “So the
efficiency of it is enormous, and the footprint and capital
infrastructure for it is nominal.”
www.bio.albertainnovates.ca
~95
Plant Cell
Energy for Cellular
Functions
Chloroplast
Photosynthesis is nature’s process for carbon dioxide
sequestration and its conversion to sugar and oxygen.
Source: Dr. Paolo Mussone, Ingenuity Lab
For more information about this project, visit
www.BioLINK.albertainnovates.ca and search for
project number “GHG-14-002.”
This story was reprinted with permission from the Alberta
Innovates Bio Solutions Highlights 2015 report.
ALBERTA INNOVATES BIO SOLUTIONS
www.bio.albertainnovates.ca