Carbon Capture Using Carbonic Anhydrase-Displaying Escherichia coli in Biologically Active Foams

摘要

In recent years, global climate change as the result of greenhouse gas emissions, especially those of CO2, has become of great concern. Many technologies have been studied and employed to capture post-combustion CO2 such as absorption and adsorption (Artanto et al., 2014; Padurean et al., 2012), membrane technology (Low et al., 2013), ionic liquid technology (Albo et al., 2010; Stevanovic et al., 2013), metal-organic frameworks (Cao et al., 2013), and biological methods (Migliardini et al., 2014; Pires et al., 2012). However, current methods have several drawbacks that make them expensive or limit their practical application. Adsorption and absorption have the problems of regeneration of spent media and storage of captured CO2. Media regeneration often requires temperature or pressure swings, which therefore require additional energy input, and the storage or usage of captured and concentrated CO2 can be expensive (Mores et al., 2012; Olajire, 2010; Yu, 2012). Furthermore, the commonly used amine solutions can be corrosive, requiring frequent mechanical maintenance, and they are also degraded by O2, SOx, and NOx present in flue gas, leading to overall poor performance in the long term (Dumee et al., 2012). Ionic liquid solutions often must be highly viscous when they are task-specified for carbon capture and the multitude of possible cation-anion combinations makes it difficult to design the optimum formulation (Hasib-ur-Rahman et al., 2010). Membrane separation technologies need pressurization or feed compensation to be able to remove CO2 at low concentrations such as in flue gas (Low et al., 2013). Furthermore, the large volume of flue gas would require a large membrane for appropriate surface area.