Carbon dioxide levels in the Earth’s atmosphere are currently registering as high as 395 parts per million. This is a full 40% higher than preindustrial levels of about 280 ppm (Celsias. com, February 23, 2008). Governments and industry are now scrambling to respond to the enormous output of CO2, which is pegged at about 80 million tonnes per day, worldwide. Carbon capture and storage technologies, which would allow us to continue relying on the smokestack model of industry, are being invested in heavily, despite criticism that it may prove ultimately impractical and prohibitively expensive.

There may be another method for dealing with carbon dioxide however – one that creates resource by-products. At UBC’s Clean Energy Research Centre, professor emeritus Colin Oloman and his research partner Dr. Hui Li,
have discovered a process – dubbed the Electro-chemical Reduction of Carbon – that essentially electrolyses carbon dioxide gas, converting it into a formic acid. This chemical can then be used in industrial applications, or potentially in fuel cells.

“Recent laboratory work has shown that reduction of CO2 to formate (HCO2), may be carried out in a tricklebed continuous electro-chemical reactor under industrially viable conditions,” explains Oloman. “Presuming the problems of cathode stability and formate cross-over can be overcome, this type of reactor is proposed for the basis of commercial operation. In particular, thepotential use of CO2 -derived fuels in so-called regenerative fuel cells holds interesting prospects for future energy systems.”

The Electro-chemical Reduction of Carbon (ERC) is a patent pending process, and the license to the process has recently been acquired by Mantra Venture Group, a cleantech venture capital firm out of Vancouver, BC. In April 2008 Mantra leased laboratory space to develop and scale up the ERC process, alongside other sustainability-based technology projects. Oloman continues to be involved with the research and development of ERC, which at the end of its optimization phase, is aiming to process about 100 tonnes of CO2 per day, according to recently published report in a European industry journal, ChemSusChem, written by Oloman.

The complete term for the process is “The Continuous Co-current Electrochemical Reduction of Carbon Dioxide”. The basic premise of ERC is the treatment of carbon dioxide gas with electrical currents and water, reducing it to a solid formate, or liquid formic acid.Formic acid is a basic element of many different industrial products and processes, and is one of the most potent organic acid bases. A future Mantra project could see fuel cells re-tooled to utilize formic acid as an energy carrier, and the company has recently acquired its own research facility in which to further R&D on what they are calling a potentially “game-changing” technology.

“The ERC process is a significant shift from the idea of CCS (carbon capture and storage), which instead of trying to bury CO2, actually harnesses its useful properties,” says John Russell, Mantra’s VP of technology evaluation. “The ERC process essentially turns the current carbon dioxide management scenario from a very expensive waste to a productive, economical resource.”

The research paper exploring the ERC process which was recently published in Europe’s ChemSusChem industry journal, notes that the electrochemical conversion of CO2 has been studied for over 100 years, with reference to the paper – Carbon Dioxide Chemistry: Environmental Issues, by W.M. Ayers, published in 1994. However, it is only recently that this research has been applied to the capture and control of the gas for the purposes of climate change mitigation. Mantra Venture Group hopes to havea commercial demonstration model of the ERC technology by the fi rst quarter of 2009.

Other projects the company is involved in include a process which would convert wood waste into cellulosic ethanol, as well as several projects in hydrogen and windpower, and a signal smoothing technology being developed
at the University of Toronto, which converts raw power into “grid standard” electricity from various renewable energy sources, including at wind farms, tidal and geothermal installations.

Mantra Venture Group | http://www.mantraenergy.com/