This bacterium could transform carbon dioxide into a bioplastic.
Carbon dioxide emissions from the energy sector reached a new high last year, although the impact of rising coal and oil use was mitigated by the development of more eco-friendly technologies like solar energy and electric vehicles. Despite this, environmentalists all across the world are undoubtedly concerned about the environment's rising carbon dioxide levels.
Scientists have been involved in finding the solution to this pollution problem, and it appears that the experts have come up with an environmentally acceptable alternative.
At the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), a group of chemical engineers has created a prototype system in which a well-known bacterium may transform carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into a useful bioplastic, resolving two global issues simultaneously.
According to a KAIST statement, the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering's joint research team of Professor Hyunjoo Lee and Distinguished Professor Sang Yup Lee succeeded in developing a system that connected the electrochemical CO2 conversion and microbial bioconversion methods in order to produce bioplastics from CO2 with high efficiency.
This hybrid system linked the electrochemical CO2 conversion and microbial bioconversion methods together. The results of the research, which showed the world's highest productivity by more than 20 times compared to similar systems, were published online on March 27th in the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)".
The team developed a technology to produce bioplastics from CO2 by linking electrochemical conversion technology with a bioconversion method that uses microorganisms.
This electrochemical-bio hybrid system is in the form of an electrolyzer, in which electrochemical conversion reactions occur, connected to a fermenter, in which microorganisms are cultured.
When CO2 is converted to formic acid in the electrolyzer, and it is fed into the fermenter, the microbes like the Cupriavidus necator, in this case, consume the carbon source to produce polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA), a microbial-derived bioplastic.
According to the research results of the existing hybrid concepts, there was a disadvantage of having low productivity or stopping at a non-continuous process due to problems with the low efficiency of the electrolysis and irregular results arising from the culturing conditions of the microbes.