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The Scientific Park of Girona University where the prototype plant is located, Source: Parc UdG Facebook page

Girona has a plant that converts CO2 to usable products, with the help of bacteria

Girona has a plant that converts CO2 to usable products, with the help of bacteria

This makes it the first of its kind in the world

The first fully automated bioelectrochemical pilot plant for carbon-neutral production from carbon dioxide (CO2) is already operational in the Spanish city of Girona. The plant is a pilot project (BioRECO2VER) located in the Science Park of the University of Girona, after winning a public tender held in 2021.

CO2 emissions mostly end up in the atmosphere where they progressively contribute to the raising of the Earth’s temperature due to the greenhouse effect. Most of us, however, also know that CO2 is an important source for the photosynthesis of plants. It turns out that bacteria can also be employed in the conversion and transformation of that gas into usable industrial products, such as lactate and isobutene.

Bioconversion is a potential turning point in the industrial sphere

To this end, a hybrid enzymatic process will be investigated for CO2 capture from industrial point sources and conversion of captured CO2 into the targeted end-products will be realized through three different proprietary microbial platforms which are representative of a much wider range of products and applications.

Bioprocess development and optimization will occur along two lines: fermentation and bio-electrochemical systems. The process itself, however, has been described as non-photosynthetic.

The project goal is to create alternative processes for commercial-scale production of platform chemicals in a more sustainable way starting from industrial emissions of CO2. However, there is still a need to overcome some technical and economic barriers, from which biotechnological processes for CO2 conversion suffer.

To name a few: gas pretreatment costs are still too high, gas transfer in the bioreactors is suboptimal, product recovery costs are still too elevated, and the scalability has not sufficiently been proven. The creation of the plant is the way forward to showing that these challenges can be solved and the whole process can be scaled up successfully.

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