Feb 19 2009
Carbon Sciences, Inc. (CABN), the developer of a breakthrough technology to transform carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions into gasoline and other fuels, announced the filing of the first in a series of patent applications protecting the company's novel and highly scalable biocatalytic process to transform CO2 into liquid fuels.
The patent application, "A Biocatalytic Process and System to Transform Carbon Dioxide into Methanol," was submitted to the United States Patent and Trademark Office on February 17, 2009. This first patent application details a complete Process Flow Diagram ("PFD") for a system that takes CO2 directly from a large emitter, such as a coal-fired power plant, and transforms it into methanol, a low level fuel, using Carbon Sciences' proprietary biocatalytic process. The resulting methanol is usable directly as a fuel, or it can be used as a building block to create higher level fuels such as gasoline, butanol and jet fuel. The company is currently underway with the design and development of additional biocatalytic systems to create these higher level fuels from low level fuels such as methanol.
Dr. Naveed Aslam, inventor of the technology and chief technology officer of Carbon Sciences, commented: "Based on our molecular and process flow simulations, we believe our biocatalytic process can achieve 99% conversion efficiency of CO2 to fuel in a single pass. The system throughput, meaning the rate of fuel production, and operating costs are things we are still optimizing."
Dr. Aslam continued: "Our proprietary biocatalytic CO2-to-Fuel process is based on emulating the natural process of certain microorganisms where internal biocatalysts are used to transform CO2 and water into fuel molecules. These biocatalysts generally die after a few cycles. Our breakthrough and proprietary technology is based on advanced nano-engineering of the biocatalysts, which enables the biocatalysts to perform their CO2 to fuel transformation hundreds of thousands to millions of times, before they die. What we have disclosed in this patent application is a complete industrial system using our biocatalytic process to transform CO2 into methanol, a low level fuel."
Carbon Sciences' President and COO, Byron Elton, stated: "The timely filing of patent applications is critical to the development of our company. Our goal is to perfect and protect our technology and then license it to energy and industrial companies worldwide. Our technology has four very important value propositions compared to other alternative fuel technologies: (1) it is the most direct path from CO2 to fuel; (2) it operates in low temperature and low pressure, therefore low energy requirements; (3) the end fuel product can be used directly in the existing infrastructure, supply chain and vehicles; and (4) it is significantly more scalable than any other single approach in meeting the world's increasing demand for liquid, portable fuels."