The worldwide drawback of an over-abundance of CO2 within the environment is ongoing, and an enormous space that must be addressed, given the quantity pumped out by trade. It’s hoped that if carbon dioxide might be transformed on the level of emission, we may take care of the local weather disaster quite a bit quicker and create a sustainable carbon financial system.
There are a couple of corporations making an attempt to deal with this. Zurich-based Climeworks is capturing CO2 from the air through industrial carbon dioxide removing know-how, and has raised $784M up to now. US-based Lanzatech is doing one thing related, turning turning carbon into feedstock. It has raised $310.4M.
Now Copenhagen-based BioTech firm SecondCircle thinks it additionally has a novel method.
It claims to have the ability to seize CO2 from industrial emitters on the level of emission utilizing ‘artificial biology’ to develop biocatalysts (micro organism). These then convert the carbon dioxide into chemical compounds which are offered again to trade. If it cane be scaled-up, this might flip even emissions right into a income alternative.
The corporate has now closed a €1.2M Pre-Seed spherical led by Berlin-based early stage investor Atlantic Labs. However it has much more to play with than that. It additionally has a €43m EU grant to scale-up the method, as it’s a part of a consortium which acquired money from the EU’s Horizon 2020 analysis and innovation programme. Dubbed “PyroCO2” the challenge goals to reveal the large-scale conversion of business carbon emissions into value-added chemical substances and supplies.
SecondCircle founders
Torbjørn Ølshøj Jensen, co-founder and CEO of SecondCircle stated in an announcement: “We strongly consider that we are able to solely resolve the worldwide CO2 drawback by constructing new approaches for sustainable worth creation from inevitable emissions.”
Artificial biology’ know-how is already beginning to be broadly utilized in a variety of areas. SecondCircle spun out of the Biosustain NNF Middle for Biosustainability on the Danish Technical College. Based in 2020 and based mostly in Copenhagen, the corporate is run by the founding group Alex Toftgaard Nielsen, Stephanie Redl, Torbjørn Ølshøj Jensen.
“By capturing carbon on the supply and changing it into extremely helpful merchandise, SecondCircle has the potential to cut back prospects’ emissions and concurrently flip the unit economics of carbon seize on its head by lastly having a worthwhile use case. Supporting this group was a no brainer for us,” added Max Kufner, Principal at Atlantic Labs.