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CALGARY, AB, March 6, 2024 /CNW/ - Rain Cage Carbon Inc., a pioneering leader in carbon capture and reuse technology, proudly announces the launch of its innovative game changing approach to profitable decarbonization. Set to revolutionize sustainable carbon capture, reuse, and renewable energy initiatives worldwide, Rain Cage Carbon will establish 'Carbon Farms' - a multiple deployment of its proprietary Carbon Capture and Reuse technology, the EDEN^TM System. This innovative technology transforms CO₂ emissions into a crystallized form of carbon, referred to as Advanced Carbon, and is ideally suited for applications within the renewable power generation and energy storage markets.

The Carbon Farms will utilize multiple EDEN^TM Systems, organized to produce industrial quantities of Advanced Carbon and in doing so effectively addressing the pressing need for scalable carbon capture solutions. The commercial value of the Advanced Carbon transitions an organization's decarbonization efforts from a cost center to a profit center.

Blair Aiken, Chairman of Rain Cage Carbon, emphasized the dual benefits of the Carbon Farm model, stating, "Our Carbon Farm model is the perfect combination of our innovative and unique decarbonization technology together with a compelling business model. It will advance decarbonization and renewable energy efforts on a global scale. By harnessing the power of our EDEN^TM System, we're not only mitigating CO₂ emissions but also generating valuable Advanced Carbon with immense commercial potential. We expect thousands of Carbon Farms to be deployed worldwide in the next decade."

The implementation of Carbon Farms marks a pivotal step forward in Rain Cage Carbon's vision of becoming a global leader in the advancement of a sustainable future. By offering scalable and economically viable solutions, Rain Cage will advance decarbonization efforts globally, transforming the challenge of carbon emission reduction into an opportunity for economic growth and sustainability.

About Rain Cage Carbon:

Rain Cage Carbon is at the forefront of carbon capture and reuse technology, dedicated to developing solutions that address the global challenge of carbon emissions and renewable energy. With its proprietary EDEN^TM System, we transform harmful global emissions into products and technology that benefit people and the planet profitably.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/rain-cage-carbon-introduces-the-carbon-farm-302082094.html

Conversations are heating up around the urgent need to decarbonize the planet, but the reality is that the whole world is made of carbon and we will continue to generate and use it.

Still, reaching net zero remains a priority and will require enormous reductions in emissions. With that realization, synthetic biology and engineering company LanzaTech commercialized a technology that captures carbon from steel mills and ferril alloy mills before it releases to the atmosphere; it goes on to be transformed to raw materials that are used in products traditionally derived from petroleum.

Plants get a new revenue stream through the sale of ethanol made from that carbon waste. And their customers have the carbon they need as a starting material for their packaging and products.

Offtakers come from the home cleaning products sector, textiles, personal care and cosmetics industries, the packaging and aviation sectors. To drop a few big names, adidas incorporated materials made from carbon into its tennis collection for the 2023 Australian Open. Coty launched a Gucci fragrance made from 100 percent emissions-derived ethanol. Unilever uses it in dishwashing soap, laundry capsules, and detergent. Now Dow is introducing a surfactant for cleaning products, and LanzaTech and L’Oreal are beginning work on polyethylene cosmetic bottles.

This is how it works: the technology captures carbon monoxide, which undergoes a fermentation process where bacteria consume the carbon and convert it to liquid ethanol in large-scale bioreactors built by LanzaTech. The technology is feedstock agnostic, says Kit McDonnell, a biologist and director of communications at LanzaTech. Pilots and demos are now underway that process agricultural waste and municipal solid waste, which she says can be used to make the same materials as from other carbon sources.

“We started out making ethanol as a fuel, but we quickly realized that ethanol could be the starting point for numerous additional applications,” McDonnell says.

Recycled carbon could actually go into all sorts of everyday commodities.

Plastipak is making food- and pharmaceutical-grade polyethylene terephthalate (PET) packaging from carbon that leverages LanzaTech’s process.

The drop-in resin, used by Plastipak personal care and pharmaceutical customers, has a 21.5 percent lower carbon footprint and requires 16 percent less fossil resources for its production compared to virgin PET, based on lifecycle analyses.

“The main step forward is that we are able to eliminate the fossil origin of the monoethylene glycol (MEG) component of PET – PET resin comprises 30 percent MEG, traditionally derived from petroleum,” says Filip Petrovic, business development manager Europe, Plastipak.

LanzaTech is moving into another area: recycling end-of-life goods, recognizing there will eventually be a need to manage all these products made from carbon emissions downstream.

“We have folks who are keen to see the technology used to help create a more circular system for materials, so we are looking ahead,” McDonnell says.

Bridgestone is vetting LanzaTech’s carbon capture technology as a possible way to recycle old tires. And sportswear brand On, who already has a running shoe made from carbon, is looking to reuse carbon in end-of-life shoes to make new products.

Brookfield Corporation has committed up to $500 million to build out the infrastructure, with potential to double the funds to help accelerate projects in North America and beyond. And in December 2023 LanzaTech announced an agreement with Olayan to fund projects in Saudi Arabia and possibly in the greater Middle East region.

Some of the overseas work is happening in partnership with governments and energy-intensive industries. Plants in India and Europe have become the first in those regions to leverage the carbon recycling technology. In India, IndianOil’s Panipat refinery offgas is being transformed into ethanol. And in Belgium, ArcelorMittal’s Steelanol plant utilizes steel mill emissions to produce ethanol.

There’s more work in planning phases, includingProject Dragon in Europe, an integrated carbon recycling and ethanol-to-jet fuel facility. With about $25 million in initial funding from the U.K. Department for Transport, this facility is intended to position Port Talbot in Wales as a new sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) production hub.

The focus is also on SAF in Abu Dhabi where LanzaTech is working with waste management company Tadweer to transform municipal solid waste into this high-demand commodity with LanzaTech sister company LanzaJet.

What’s driving the interest varies by region. From LanzaTech’s conversations and experience, the E.U. is looking at how to reach net zero; the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has a range of circular economy initiatives aiming to strategically align economics with environmental benefits; and U.S. players are incentivized by policies such as the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes tax credits for carbon capture and storage and carbon capture and utilization technologies.

“In general, we are seeing carbon policy develop in many regions that support material circularity, which stems from both a climate perspective and an energy security perspective,” McDonnell says.

Japanese-headquartered Sekisui Chemical Company prepares feedstock to be fed into LanzaTech’s gas fermentation process to make ethanol.

Plans are to produce 12,000,000 to 13,000,000 liters a year from about 150 tons a day of Kuji City’s municipal solid waste (MSW). The ethanol will be used for one of two applications: plastic recycling or SAF. For plastic recycling ethanol will go to chemical companies to be converted to ethylene, and for SAF it will go to alcohol-to-jet fuel conversion companies.

The process fits in with a new direction Japan is taking given its waste management situation, believes Toru Ryoso, president and representative director of SBR, which is ajoint venture between Sekisui and INCJ to commercialize the technology.

“Due to limitations of land, landfilling of burnable waste has been prohibited since 2001 in Japan. Currently all burnable municipal solid waste is incinerated.

“Japan is trying to shift to material recycling as well as chemical recycling. Our waste-to-ethanol process falls in the latter category of chemical recycling,” Ryoso says.

After studying a catalytic method to produce ethanol, SBR decided LanzaTech’s approach was more fitting to handle gas from MSW.

“The microbes can convert the gas efficiently to ethanol at ambient pressure and temperatures, so little additional environmental alterations (i.e. energy inputs) are needed in order to run the bioreactors,” Ryoso says.

By contrast, other industrial processes may require a high or low temperature or a specific pressure in order to suit their catalytic agent.

Says McDonnell: “We recognize how valuable ‘wasted’ carbon really is. Why keep pulling more oil out of the ground to make the things we need when we have aboveground carbon in major abundance?”

About the Author(s)

Arlene Karidis

Freelance writer, Waste360

Arlene Karidis has 30 years’ cumulative experience reporting on health and environmental topics for B2B and consumer publications of a global, national and/or regional reach, including Waste360, Washington Post, The Atlantic, Huffington Post, Baltimore Sun and lifestyle and parenting magazines. In between her assignments, Arlene does yoga, Pilates, takes long walks, and works her body in other ways that won’t bang up her somewhat challenged knees; drinks wine; hangs with her family and other good friends and on really slow weekends, entertains herself watching her cat get happy on catnip and play with new toys.

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Researchers begin applying lessons learned from the ocean to soils

Armed with a catalog of hundreds of thousands of DNA and RNA virus species in the world’s oceans, scientists are now zeroing in on the viruses most likely to combat climate change by helping trap carbon dioxide in seawater or, using similar techniques, different viruses that may prevent methane’s escape from thawing Arctic soil.

By combining genomic sequencing data with artificial intelligence analysis, researchers have identified ocean-based viruses and assessed their genomes to find that they “steal” genes from other microbes or cells that process carbon in the sea. Mapping microbial metabolism genes, including those for underwater carbon metabolism, revealed 340 known metabolic pathways throughout the global oceans. Of these, 128 were also found in the genomes of ocean viruses.

“I was shocked that the number was that high,” said Matthew Sullivan, professor of microbiology and director of the Center of Microbiome Science at The Ohio State University.

Having mined this massive trove of data via advances in computation, the team has now revealed which viruses have a role in carbon metabolism and are using this information in newly developed community metabolic models to help predict how using viruses to engineer the ocean microbiome toward better carbon capture would look.

“The modeling is about how viruses may dial up or dial down microbial activity in the system,” Sullivan said. “Community metabolic modeling is telling me the dream data point: which viruses are targeting the most important metabolic pathways, and that matters because it means they’re good levers to pull on.”

Sullivan presented the research today (Feb. 17, 2024) at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Denver.

Sullivan was the virus coordinator for the Tara Oceans Consortium, a three-year global study of the impact of climate change on the world’s oceans and the source of 35,000 water samples containing the microbial bounty. His lab focuses on phages, viruses that infect bacteria, and their potential to be scaled up in an engineering framework to manipulate marine microbes into converting carbon into the heaviest organic form that will sink to the ocean floor.

“Oceans soak up carbon, and that buffers us against climate change. CO2 is absorbed as a gas, and its conversion into organic carbon is dictated by microbes,” Sullivan said. “What we’re seeing now is that viruses target the most important reactions in these microbial community metabolisms. This means we can start investigating which viruses could be used to convert carbon toward the kind we want.

“In other words, can we strengthen this massive ocean buffer to be a carbon sink to buy time against climate change, as opposed to that carbon being released back into the atmosphere to accelerate it?”

In 2016, the Tara team determined that carbon sinking in the ocean was related to the presence of viruses. It is thought that viruses help sink carbon when virus-infected carbon-processing cells cluster into larger, sticky aggregates that drop to the ocean floor. The researchers developed AI-based analytics to identify from thousands of viruses which few are “VIP” viruses to culture in the lab and work with as model systems for ocean geoengineering.

This new community metabolic modeling, developed by collaborator Professor Damien Eveillard of the Tara Oceans Consortium, helps them understand what unintended consequences might be of such an approach. Sullivan’s lab is taking these oceanic lessons learned and applying them to using viruses to engineer microbiomes in human settings to aid recovery from spinal cord injury, improve outcomes for infants born to mothers with HIV, combat infection in burn wounds, and more.

“The conversation we’re having is, ‘How much of this is transferable?’” said Sullivan, also a professor of civil, environmental and geodetic engineering. “The overall goal is engineering microbiomes toward what we think is something useful.”

He also reported on early efforts to use phages as geoengineering tools in an entirely different ecosystem: the permafrost in northern Sweden, where microbes both change the climate and respond to climate change as the frozen soil thaws. Virginia Rich, associate professor of microbiology at Ohio State, is co-director of the National Science Foundation-funded EMERGE Biology Integration Institute based at Ohio State that organizes the microbiome science at the Sweden field site. Rich also co-led previous research that identified a lineage of single-cell organisms in the thawing permafrost soil as a significant producer of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

Rich co-organized the AAAS session with Ruth Varner of the University of New Hampshire, who co-directs the EMERGE Institute, which is focusing on better understanding how microbiomes respond to permafrost thaw and the resulting climate interactions.

Sullivan’s talk was titled “From ecosystems biology to managing microbiomes with viruses,” and was presented at the session titled “Microbiome-Targeted Ecosystem Management: Small Players, Big Roles.”

The oceans work is supported by the National Science Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and Tara Oceans, and, in addition to the NSF, the soils work has been funded by the Department of Energy and the Grantham Foundation.

(Image credit: Betül Kaçar)

Self-sustaining chemical reactions that could support biology radically different from life as we know it might exist on many different planets using a variety of elements beyond the carbon upon which Earth's life is based, a new study finds.

On Earth, life is based on organic compounds. These molecules are composed of carbon and often include other elements such as hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur.

However, scientists have long wondered if alien life might evolve based on significantly different chemistry. For example, researchers have long speculated that silicon might also serve as a backbone for biology.

Related: The search for alien life

"It's important to explore these possibilities so that we have an idea of what all forms of life can look like, not just Earth life," study senior author Betül Kaçar, an astrobiologist, bacteriologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Space.com.

A kind of chemical interaction that is key to life on Earth is known as autocatalysis. Autocatalytic reactions are self-sustaining — they can produce molecules that encourage the same reaction to happen again. Envision a growing population of rabbits. Pairs of rabbits come together, produce litters of new rabbits, and then the new rabbits grow up to pair off and make even more rabbits. It doesn't take many rabbits to soon have a lot more rabbits.

"One of the major reasons that origin-of-life researchers care about autocatalysis is because reproduction — a key feature of life — is an example of autocatalysis," Kaçar said. "Life catalyzes the formation of more life. One cell produces two cells, which can become four and so on. As the number of cells multiply, the number and diversity of possible interactions multiplies accordingly."

In the new study, researchers searched for autocatalysis beyond organic compounds. They reasoned that autocatalysis could help drive abiogenesis — the origin of life from lifelessness.

The scientists focused on what are called comproportionation cycles, which can generate multiple copies of a molecule. These products can be used as starting materials to help these cycles happen again, resulting in autocatalysis.

"Comproportionation is arguably unique because it is a single reaction that produces multiples of an output — it looks a lot like reproduction," study lead author Zhen Peng, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Space.com.

Related: Fermi Paradox: Where are the aliens?

To find these reactions, the scientists analyzed more than two centuries of digitized scientific documents written in many different languages. "With effective language search and translation tools, we were able to design and conduct this first-of-its-kind assessment of the pervasiveness of autocatalytic cycles," study co-author Zach Adam, a geologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Space.com.

Ultimately, the researchers discovered 270 different cycles of autocatalytic reactions. "Autocatalysis may not be that rare, but instead it might be a general feature of many different environments, even those that are really different from Earth," Kaçar said.

Most of the 270 cycles did not employ organic compounds. Some centered around elements that are absent or exceedingly rare in life on Earth, such as mercury, or the radioactive metal thorium. A number of cycles likely only happen under extremely high or low temperatures or pressures.

The researchers even discovered four autocatalytic cycles involving noble gases, which only rarely if ever chemically react with other elements. If even a relatively inert gas such as xenon could take part in autocatalysis, "there is good reason to guess that autocatalysis occurs more easily in other elements," Peng said.

Only eight of these cycles were relatively complex ones made up of four or more reactions. Most of the 270 cycles were simple, each consisting of just two reactions.

"It was thought that these sorts of reactions are very rare," Kaçar said in a statement. "We are showing that it's actually far from rare. You just need to look in the right place."

The researchers noted that it's possible to combine multiple cycles together, even when they are very different from each other. This could lead to self-sustaining chemical reactions that generate a diverse range of molecules to produce a great deal of complexity.

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"With so many basic recipes for autocatalysis on hand to draw from, a focus of research can now shift to understanding how autocatalysis, through comproportionation, may have more pronounced effects in shaping the chemistry of a planet," Kaçar said.

The scientists hope that future research can experimentally test this new cookbook they have created.

"The cycles presented here are an array of basic recipes that can be mixed and matched in ways that haven't been tried before on our planet," Peng said. "They might lead to the discovery of completely new examples of complex chemistry that work in conditions where carbon- or even silicon-based cycles are too either combusted or frozen out."

It remains uncertain how plausible these cycles are, the researchers cautioned. "It is not guaranteed that all the examples we collated can be run in a lab or be found on other astronomical objects," Peng said.

In addition to the implications this work might have for the search for life in the universe and understanding the origins of life, this research may have practical applications, such as "optimizing chemical synthesis and making efficient use of resources and energy," Adam said. "Another is for using chemical compounds for interesting tasks such as chemical computation."

The scientists detailed their findings Sept. 18 in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

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Charles Q. Choi is a contributing writer for Space.com and Live Science. He covers all things human origins and astronomy as well as physics, animals and general science topics. Charles has a Master of Arts degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia, School of Journalism and a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of South Florida. Charles has visited every continent on Earth, drinking rancid yak butter tea in Lhasa, snorkeling with sea lions in the Galapagos and even climbing an iceberg in Antarctica. Visit him at http://www.sciwriter.us

RMI and USGBC provide answers to current questions about embodied carbon and key actions to accelerate the decarbonization of building construction

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Over the past decade, embodied carbon emerged as a critical factor to consider in the planning and construction of buildings. Embodied carbon represents the millions of tons of Earth-warming carbon emissions released during the life cycle of building products. The World Green Building Council estimates embodied carbon alone accounts for 11 percent of global annual energy-related emissions. Given the scale of the sector’s climate impact, it is imperative that owners, designers, builders, manufacturers, and policymakers lead the market by prioritizing this issue. As our understanding of embodied carbon has steadily increased, so has the urgency of reducing all carbon emissions.

This report stresses that now is the time to take decisive action using the best knowledge we have and, in parallel, to accelerate the sector’s learning curve and achieve rapid market transformation. A major challenge that hinders faster progress is “analysis paralysis.” Stakeholders need access to easily understandable scientific takeaways that cut through the noise and provide guidance on how to take immediate action in the building industry. On the other hand, we also must resist the urge to find a “silver bullet” by relying on a single material or design strategy to cut embodied carbon. We must take a critical eye to the science and find solutions that work, no matter where our leverage lies: in policy, on projects, or in product manufacturing.

The report identifies eleven questions that continue to hold back action on embodied carbon, and answers these questions with concise text and illustrations, providing key takeaways and action items as well as providing in-depth resources to be explored.

Building decarbonization requires collective industry action: forerunners are already demonstrating what is possible, but we need more leaders to push the boundaries to scale up swift and deep decarbonization. The industry is poised to make this leap, and there are substantial emissions reductions available today that are well within reach. Tools and guidance are widely available, low-hanging fruit have been identified, and new policies are creating greater market certainty. It is time for everyone to get on board to reduce embodied carbon. This report shows you how to get started.