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A new, low-carbon way to make chemicals, without the big, dirty factories -- Startup OCOchem has built factory-assembled “artificial photosynthesis” cells to make formate, a widely used chemical now produced with fossil fuels
Startup OCOchem has built factory-assembled “artificial photosynthesis” cells to make formate, a widely used chemical now produced with fossil fuels.
Formic acid can be processed into a number of organic compounds, including many now made from fossil fuels, he said — “not because they’re higher performance, or cleaner, or cheaper, but because they do the job good enough.” The trick is to find cost-effective ways to separate the hydrogen molecules from the formates once they reach their destination, said Ye Xu, associate professor of chemical engineering at Louisiana State University. In a way, Brix noted, it’s a similar process to the years of research that have gone into OCOchem’s core technologies, such as the gas-diffusion electrodes that allow it to electrolyze water and CO2 at commercial-scale volumes.
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