Biotech startup Codexis eyes emerging carbon market—an enzyme that helps capture carbon dioxide

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.reuters.com/article/smallBusinessNews/idUSTRE57B2QF20090812

Biotech startup Codexis eyes emerging carbon market

Wed Aug 12, 2009 10:04am EDT

By Poornima Gupta

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - U.S. biotechnology company Codexis, which is partly owned by Royal Dutch Shell Plc, is expanding its product offerings to target the emerging market for carbon capture and storage, President and Chief Executive Officer Alan Shaw said on Tuesday.

…

Coal companies, governments and environmental activists are hoping for breakthrough technologies that will help trap, transport and bury underground carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas blamed for global warming.

The Redwood City, California-based company has been mostly focused on the pharmaceutical and biofuels sector, but is now actively looking for a partner to help the company market an enzyme that helps captures carbon dioxide from smokestacks of coal-fired power plants.

"Coal is not going anywhere fast," Shaw said. "There's an urgent need to take carbon dioxide out of coal-fired power stations."

…

[NNadir]

1. What "enzyme" would that be? Chlorophyll?

Chlorophyll has been enzymatically doing that for, um, billions of years, no?

Has someone found a way to patent it?

Sometimes these marketing hype scams border on the absurd...

Just out of curiosity, does anyone ever think about the laws of thermodynamics when coming up with this stuff? Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Gibbs Free Energy of Mixing is still what it was 10,000 years ago, is it not? If so, what is the energy cost of separating carbon dioxide and where does the energy come from?

[Indenturedebtor]

2. Yeah "enzymes" do come from somewhere...

I think that a solution may be found by using franken-bacteria or somesuch, but any material that has to be mass-produced will have to have it's production powered.

I am very suspicious.

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. "Enzymes" are catalysts

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enzyme">Enzymes encourage specific chemical reactions, but are not used up in the process (although they may be destroyed, by heat, or solvents resulting from the reaction.)

[NNadir]

4. Do you have any idea of how many catalysts there are that fix carbon dioxide?

The Kolbe Schmidt reaction has been industrial for more than a century.

The Monsanto process for carbonylation of methanol to give acetic acid is another example.

I spend a fair fraction of my time reviewing the class of carbonylation catalysts in the literature, and I could read all day and all night for years on this topic and never read the same thing twice.

The problem is not catalysts per se, especially temperamental catalysts like enzymes. The problem is the same as it's always been, energy.

Why is that so difficult to understand?