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MEMBRANE TECHNOLOGY

Embedded enzymes catalyse capture

Nature Energy volume 3, pages 359–360 (2018)Cite this article

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Membrane technologies for carbon capture can offer economic and environmental advantages over conventional amine-based absorption, but can suffer from limited gas flux and selectivity to CO2. Now, a membrane based on enzymes embedded in hydrophilic pores is shown to exhibit combined flux and selectivity that challenges the state of the art.

Two key requirements for membrane materials for CO2 separation are that they are highly permeable to CO2 and highly selective for CO2 over other gases. The membrane developed by Jiang, Brinker and colleagues achieves excellent results in both respects. Their work recognizes that achieving high CO2 flow rates requires not only a material that has an intrinsic affinity for this molecule, but also that this material is formed into a mechanically stable, ultrathin layer. If the layer is too thick, it will provide too much resistance to flow. The researchers manufacture a layer that is very thin (18 nm) by using an oxygen plasma to etch a hydrophilic surface into 8-nm-diameter nanopores that have been formed beforehand by evaporation-induced self-assembly of block copolymer-templated mesoporous silica. The ultrathin hydrophilic portions of the nanopores are then filled with water, which is stabilized by capillary forces of up to 35 atm (Fig. 1b). The remaining length of the mesoporous silica nanopores are hydrophobic and hence remain free for rapid transport of the captured CO2 away from the surface.

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Fig. 1: Carbon capture using an enzyme.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemical Engineering, Peter Cook Centre for Carbon Capture & Storage Research, University of Melbourne , Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    Sandra Kentish

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  1. Sandra Kentish
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Correspondence to Sandra Kentish.

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Kentish, S. Embedded enzymes catalyse capture. Nat Energy 3, 359–360 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-018-0146-8

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