NSF Award
2122799
The broader impact/commercial potential of this Partnerships for Innovation – Research Partnerships (PFI-RP) project is the production of sustainable precipitated calcium carbonates (PCCs). Increased carbon dioxide (CO2) has led to an increase in global temperatures. This warming is expected to lead to increased extreme weather events, reduced food production, ocean acidification, and damage to critical ecosystem services, necessitating the need to find new technologies that remove this excess CO2 through sequestration. This research uses a novel carbon capture methodology to trap atmospheric CO2 as micron-scale PCCs, which have a wide range of industrial uses in paper, sealants, and paint. Around 42 billion liters of paint are produced globally and up to 30% of this volume includes fillers and pigments that PCCs could replace. This use of CO2 has the potential to significantly improve the carbon footprint of paint, while the unique properties of these microbially-derived PCCs can increase performance. The US paint market is valued at $28 billion annually, with PCCs representing a served available market of $262 million.<br/><br/>The proposed project will determine the scalability of PCC production technology. There are two technical challenges limiting industrial scaling of production (to rates up to 1,500 L h-1); These include the quick and efficient separation of micron-sized PCCs from bacteria, and the development of a process that is price competitive with current PCC technologies. By combining microbial metabolic processes with genetic enhancement, the team will identify and establish the steady-state conditions that optimize PCC size, morphology, and rate of production. It is the aim of the proposed work to develop a continuous culture strategy that mimics similar industrial-scale processes, such as ethanol production. The team will also use the principles of fluid dynamics to design novel, tangential flow filtration (TFF) strategies. The technology will be moved to from small batch culture approach to an integrated 1 liter continuous-culture filtration process to model the effectiveness of the approach under industrially-relevant conditions. The research will increase the scientific understanding of microbially-induced precipitation in bacteria as well as the potential to develop novel separation approaches.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
