Shelley D. Minteer (left) and Huaijun Guan, a Ph.D. candidate in chemistry. Photo by Blaine Falkena/Missouri S&T.
How can we turn carbon dioxide into fuel? Biomanufacturing might be the answer.
Dr. Shelley D. Minteer, founding director of the Kummer Institute Center for Resource Sustainability and professor of chemistry; and Dr. Fateme Fayyazbakhsh, assistant professor of mechanical engineering; and the Arzeda Corporation, a protein design startup, have received an award from the National Science Foundation. The award is for a total of $7.8 million, with $1.8 million going to S&T over the course of three years.
The goal of this project is to turn carbon dioxide into clean, usable fuel by combining biology and electrochemistry in a process called biomanufacturing.
This project came from NSF’s newly founded “Ideas Lab,” a week-long “summer camp” in Washington D.C. for scholars and industry leaders to present projects for potential funding. The Ideas Lab is about solving grand challenges in the scientific field.
One of the challenges, Minteer said, is to figure out how to remove carbon dioxide that we produce and use it as a reactant to make value-added chemicals, like making it into fuel.
The solution might be biology. Plants take in carbon dioxide from the air and by using sunlight, turn it into leaves, fruit or other plant material.
“Biology has figured out how to do that really well. We would like to figure out, without using sunlight, how to harness what biology does,” Minteer says. “Biology does this with enzymes.”
The goal is to power a reaction using electricity by using enzymes, which are proteins that speed up chemical reactions. That’s where Arzeda comes in.
The compnay uses advanced technology to design new proteins (custom-built enzymes) that can work in this new environment, rather than just living organisms. Minteer’s team will be developing the electrodes and electrochemical reactors, while Arzeda will work on enzyme development.
At the end of the project, they hope biomanufacturing can solve this grand challenge.
“This is what the Kummer Institute is about,” Minteer says. “For us not to just be academics sitting in our offices and classrooms, but to actually be solving industry’s problems and building economic development.”
About Missouri S&T
Missouri University of Science and Technology is a STEM-focused research university of over 7,000 students located in Rolla, Missouri. Part of the four-campus University of Missouri System, Missouri S&T offers over 100 degrees in 40 areas of study and is among the nation’s top public universities for salary impact, according to The Wall Street Journal. For more information about Missouri S&T, visit www.mst.edu.
This is such an exciting development in sustainable fuel technology! I’m really interested in how biomanufacturing can help us tackle climate change. Looking forward to seeing more updates on this project!