High Performance Catalyst System Inspired by Plants

Innovation: Industry

Novomer

Image: Yoal Desurmont / Unsplash / CC BY SA - Creative Commons Attribution + ShareAlike

Catalyze Chemical Breakdown

Life depends upon the building up and breaking down of biological molecules. Catalysts, in the form of proteins or RNA, play an important role by dramatically increasing the rate of a chemical transformation––without being consumed in the reaction. The regulatory role that catalysts play in complex biochemical cascades is one reason so many simultaneous chemical transformations can occur inside living cells in water at ambient conditions. For example, consider the 10-enzyme catalytic breakdown and transformation of glucose to pyruvate in the glycolysis metabolic pathway.

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Chemically Assemble Organic Compounds

Part of the reason that synthesis reactions (chemical assembly) can occur under such mild conditions as ambient temperature and pressure in water is because most often, they occur in a stepwise, enzyme-mediated fashion, sipping or releasing small amounts of energy at each step. For example, the synthesis of glucose from carbon dioxide in the Calvin cycle is a 15-step process, each step regulated by a different enzyme.

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Chemically Break Down Inorganic Compounds

The vast majority of biochemical assembly and breakdown processes–even by the most complex organisms–occur within cells. In fact, cells are able to perform hundreds, even thousands of chemical transformations at the same time under life-friendly conditions (ambient temperature and pressure in an aqueous environment). For example, inorganic pyrophosphate is hydrolyzed to form two phosphate groups in the cellular degradation pathway of fatty acids.

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Patents

Novo22 from Novomer uses carbon dioxide to produce biodegradable plastic polymers.

Benefits

Reduced cost
Efficient
Renewable
Reduced energy usage

Applications

Manufacturing

UN Sustainable Development Goals Addressed

Goal 3: Good Health & Wellbeing

The Challenge

Plastics are a carbon-based material found in a variety of consumer products, such as clothing and furniture. To create plastics, traditional techniques consist of ‘cracking’ a carbon into monomers, then using the monomers to create an array of different commercial products. This process is oftentimes energy intensive, uses hazardous chemicals, and releases additional CO2.

Innovation Details

Novo22™ is an advanced technology that creates biodegradable and compostable plastic biopolymers. Novomer’s polymers are made from a polyhydroxyalkanoate backbone, which is produced by organisms such as algae. This means it will degrade much more quickly and easily in the environment compared to traditional plastics. Novomer’s patented process is feedstock agnostic, meaning it can use either waste CO2 or 100% renewable sources to create the biopolymers.

Demonstration of Novomer's Circular Economy.

Novo22™ Loop demonstrating the inputs and outputs of the catalyst system.

Biological Model

The process of in plants involves a series of steps and reactions that use solar energy, water, and carbon dioxide to produce oxygen and organic compounds. Carbon dioxide serves as the source of carbon, and it enters the photosynthetic process in a series of reactions called carbon-fixation reactions.

See Related Strategy

Biological Strategy

Photosynthesis Makes Useful Organic Compounds Out of CO2

Plants

Photosynthesis in plants makes useful organic compounds out of carbon dioxide through carbon-fixation reactions.

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