Stepping on the Gas to a Circular Economy: Accelerating Development of Carbon-Negative Chemical Production from Gas Fermentation

Abstract

Owing to rising levels of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere and oceans, climate change poses significant environmental, economic, and social challenges globally. Technologies that enable carbon capture and conversion of greenhouse gases into useful products will help mitigate climate change by enabling a new circular carbon economy. Gas fermentation using carbon-fixing microorganisms offers an economically viable and scalable solution with unique feedstock and product flexibility that has been commercialized recently. We review the state of the art of gas fermentation and discuss opportunities to accelerate future development and rollout. We discuss the current commercial process for conversion of waste gases to ethanol, including the underlying biology, challenges in process scale-up, and progress on genetic tool development and metabolic engineering to expand the product spectrum. We emphasize key enabling technologies to accelerate strain development for acetogens and other nonmodel organisms. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Volume 12 is June 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Carbon Monoxide Fate in the Environment as an Inspiration For Biorefinery Industry: A Review

“…An example of a massscale operation is The Shell Pearl Gas-to-Liquids installation located in Qatar, which since 2012 uses a natural gas well to produce up to 140,000 barrels per day (Shell, 2022). However, due to environmental reasons, based on the concern to reduce carbon emissions, the spectrum of materials used in the FT process has been expanded to various groups of waste, including agricultural, organic industrial, or municipal solid waste; the use of the latter is implemented at the Fulcrum Bioenergy plant, whose production capacity is <1,000 barrels per day (Fackler et al, 2021).…”

“…As in the case of the BMWGS reaction mentioned above, it results from the ability of the microbial catalyst to self-replicate and the process tolerance is based on the binding of pollutants with microorganisms, which are washed out of the reactor after being killed (Köpke and Simpson, 2020). This is facilitated by the continuous process lasting several weeks or months (Fackler et al, 2021). This situation does not lead to the accumulation of unfavorable substances in the process, unlike in traditional chemical thermocatalytic processes.…”

“…This has its economic consequences, making the fermentation process possible to reduce capital expenditure by keeping the high selectivity of the products despite the variability of the substrates, e.g., by lowering the required level of raw materials (Clomburg et al, 2017). Moreover, this high selectivity increases the conversion efficiency due to the formation of fewer byproducts than is the case with catalyzed chemical processes (Fackler et al, 2021). In addition, the features of the process enable the creation of modern facilities, which, unlike the previously adopted classic industrial model, are able to flexibly operate with various groups of microorganisms using one infrastructure.…”

“…Learning about acetogenesis in 1932, willingness to find the added value of fossil sources, and to ensure energy security, were the driving force behind scientific research on syngas fermentation as early as the 1980s. After groundbreaking events, such as the demonstration of the use of gas fermentation to produce ethanol in 1989 and the isolation of the first acetogens producing various compounds in 1990, gas fermentation was considered ready to be attempted on a larger scale (Köpke and Simpson, 2020;Fackler et al, 2021). The top three organic solvents from syngas identified based on their octane values were methanol, ethanol, and iso-propanol (Fackler et al, 2021).…”

“…After groundbreaking events, such as the demonstration of the use of gas fermentation to produce ethanol in 1989 and the isolation of the first acetogens producing various compounds in 1990, gas fermentation was considered ready to be attempted on a larger scale (Köpke and Simpson, 2020;Fackler et al, 2021). The top three organic solvents from syngas identified based on their octane values were methanol, ethanol, and iso-propanol (Fackler et al, 2021). The efforts and knowledge gained from the laboratory studies were then transferred to the Bioengineering Resources, Inc., pilot plant in 2003 (which obtained rights to commercialize the technology in 2008), Coskata company (established in 2006, since 2015as Synata Bio), and INEOS New Planet BioEnergy commercial venture in 2011 2016 due to problems related to with a high content of hydrogen cyanide in syngas).…”