Engineering Biological Materials for Carbon Capture and the Electrochemical Reduction of Carbon Dioxide to Light Hydrocarbons

Abstract

Decarbonization of the global economy will require the identification of substitute carbon sources for the production of fuels, plastics, textiles, pharmaceuticals, and other products that are derived from fossil carbon. The gigaton scale of carbon dioxide emissions necessitates the development of better materials for its capture, yet offers the opportunity to use purified carbon dioxide gas as an input to the electrochemical carbon dioxide reduction reaction. This reaction combines carbon dioxide, water, and electricity in the presence of specialized catalysts to create light hydrocarbons such as methane, ethanol, and ethylene, precursors critical to many of the products that power the modern economy.

In this thesis, I present a range of biological materials capable of capturing carbon dioxide and catalyzing its conversion to products. First, catalysts made from genetically-engineered M13 bacteriophage are light-crosslinked and metallized to create copper electrodes that explore the effect of pore structure on catalyst performance. Second, catalysts made via copper electrodeposition are modified by viral proteins to create nanostructured, crystalline electrodes that shift product distributions towards C1 hydrocarbons like formate and methane. Third, catalysts made from biological carbon nanofibers template copper nanoparticles that increase catalyst activity and generate product distributions on par with copper catalysts found in the literature. Fourth, amine resins templated on the surface of engineered M13 bacteriophage produce high-surface-area materials capable of carbon dioxide capture and release. Additionally, I exposit reaction systems for maximizing gas availability and reaction stability for single- and double-sided electrodes in carbon dioxide electroreduction.

The biological catalysts and membranes described here provide structure/performance information to advance the design of specialized catalysts and membranes for the sustainable creation of hydrocarbon products from atmospheric carbon dioxide.