Our Technology
How does it work?
Enhanced Carbon Capture
The world produces 40 billion tonnes of CO2 a year. Trees absorb CO2 and make oxygen for us. There are harmless microbes that live in our oceans called cyanobacteria that can also perform this same process but 50x faster. Since 2020, scientists can now use genetic modification to make a very fast-growing version of this bacteria capture CO2 even faster than ever before.
Precision Fermentation and Photosynthetic Bacteria
Bacteria can behave like a microscopic factory. You can feed it sugar and it will excrete certain compounds for you. Since the 1970s we have been tricking bacteria into making chemically complex drug molecules by using microbes in a process called Precision Fermentation. Some molecules such as cytokines and growth factors are so unique and difficult to make that industry need to grow mammalian cell lines like human embryonic cells (HEK 293) or CHO cells to produce and can cost between $10-100 per gram. But with photosynthetic bacteria, instead of needing glucose, all it requires is CO2 and light to power the process. Since 2021, CyanoCapture has invested heavily into developing technology to manipulate the genetics of fast-growing cyanobacteria.
Sustainable Biomanufacturing and Carbon Storage
CyanoCapture is now able to not only modify the DNA of the bacteria to trick it into thinking that it needs to absorb more CO2 as quickly as possible, but in the process also make the cells pump out tiny amounts of very expensive molecules (called recombinant proteins) in the process, that we can pick and choose. We use a different technology to harvest these expensive molecules out of the bacteria at high purity, without any endotoxins, and sell it to the Biopharma industry. At the end of the process, there is a lot of dead bacteria left over. Instead of throwing away the debris, we harvest this too and heat it in a furnace without oxygen in a process called pyrolysis. This makes a special type of expensive carbon-rich material that can be used to make sodium-ion batteries.
The money we make from selling small amounts of highly expensive secreted molecules is enough to keep the business profitable without selling any battery materials. But the dead bacteria that we co-produce from the captured carbon is an inevitable part of the process, containing thousands of tonnes worth of CO2. We are one of few technologies in the world that is able to combine manufacturing with durable carbon capture and storage.
Our value proposition is simple. By making large-scale carbon capture a byproduct of an already profitable photosynthetic biomanufacturing process, we propose to make carbon capture entirely free for emitting industries around the world, and radically lower the cost of medicines in LMICs.