The presentation was made at the 4th Annual Carbon Capture and Sequestration Business Summit in Washington, DC (www.infocastinc.com/carbon10) by James Lalonde, Ph.D., Vice President of Biochemistry and Engineering Research and Development, Codexis; and Jonathan Carley, Vice President, Business Development, CO2 Solution.
In May 2010, Codexis was selected to receive up to a $4.7 million ARPA-E Recovery Act programme grant from the U.S. Department of Energy for development of innovative technology to remove carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plant emissions. The grant was one of 37 research projects which the DoE said "could fundamentally change the way the country uses and produces energy." Coal-fired power plants are major emitters of carbon dioxide, a significant greenhouse gas. The grant supports development of biocatalysts for more efficient carbon capture from these plants.
Codexis and CO2 Solution are jointly developing this technology, and the companies will describe their development programme today. Current carbon capture technology is inefficient and too expensive for large scale deployment. The collaboration focuses on development of customized carbonic anhydrase (CA) biocatalysts and their process applications that have the potential to enable cost-effective, industrial-scale capture of CO2 from power plant flue gases. Programme results to date have demonstrated the combined proprietary technologies can be used to create CA biocatalysts with improved absorption and stability in industrial conditions.
The technology development collaboration between Codexis and CO2 Solution was announced in December 2009. The technology is based on the use of customized CA biocatalysts that have the potential to enable cost-effective, energy-efficient processes for the capture of carbon dioxide. Carbonic anhydrase is an enzyme that efficiently catalyzes CO2 in living systems. As part of the collaboration, Codexis completed a CDN$2 million equity investment in CO2 Solution and holds 16.6% of CO2 Solution's issued and outstanding common shares.
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