November 12, 2024
Susie Dai, professor of chemical and biomedical engineering, is joining Mizzou鈥檚 faculty with a mission: to find new ways to utilize carbon dioxide (CO2) while improving the economy. And she鈥檚 bringing with her the resources and partnerships of an inter-institutional research center.
鈥淐limate change isn鈥檛 going away, we need to find new ways to get rid of excess CO2 that organizations will utilize,鈥 Dai said. 鈥淲e have options now, such as carbon capture and sequestration, but they鈥檙e expensive. It is hard to convince people to pay to inject CO2 underground. I鈥檓 working to develop a solution that both reduces emissions and waste and drives a circular bioeconomy.鈥
Dai is a co-principal investigator on a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded 糖心Vlog传媒 Research Center (ERC) housed at . The center, Carbon Utilization Redesign for Biomanufacturing-Empowered Decarbonization (CURB), operates with the goal of driving innovation in manufacturing that decreases greenhouse gas emissions.
鈥淭his discipline requires strong researchers across many areas,鈥 Dai said. 鈥淵ou need chemistry and chemical engineering to convert CO2 with a high efficiency. You need biology and biological engineering to program different microorganisms and enzymes that can convert carbon intermediates. We鈥檙e bringing these together along with social scientists to consider the societal impacts of this work as we develop this bioeconomy.鈥
As a part of this group, Dai is using her chemistry and bioengineering backgrounds to use electrochemistry to convert CO2 into a soluble intermediate that bioengineered microorganisms can use. Essentially, she鈥檚 working to develop a system to turn CO2 into food for organisms, like bacteria, that then produce useful chemicals for manufacturing processes.
鈥淲e want to empower these organisms to be able to create chemicals more efficiently that we can then use to create new products that benefit society,鈥 she said.
Interdisciplinary research inspiring innovation
Beginning her career as a chemist, Dai always wanted to become a biologist. She started working to valorize agriculture waste before expanding to environmental remediation methods.
It was during that work that she began combining electricity and electrocatalysis with bioengineered microorganisms, making them more efficient at bioremediation.
鈥淚 realized that since we can use microorganisms to create a better recycling system, we can use these microorganisms in something that recycles CO2 to create better products,鈥 Dai said. 鈥淚n chemistry, when you break a chemical bond, you will build a new chemical bond. It鈥檚 the same thing here. Something breaks so that another thing is built. I used this principle to develop this new idea.鈥
Dai鈥檚 lab specializes in producing biocompatible CO2 intermediates鈥攑roducts created from CO2 that can be used to make other things鈥攕uch as ethanol. At Mizzou, she will be focused on two tasks. First, working to improve the efficiency of CO2 conversion into these intermediates. Second, she will be adapting different microorganisms and purifying different enzymes to improve their capacity and specificity to consume the intermediates her team produces.
Applications of her research include developing microorganisms that can convert CO2 into bioplastics and microorganisms that can convert CO2 into lipids, which can then be used to produce . Research into these applications is in the process of publication.
鈥淭he more efficient you can make a process, the lower the costs will become,鈥 she said. 鈥淲hen you apply these concepts at a large manufacturing scale as we鈥檇 like to do in these projects, it has to be cheap to be an acceptable solution. Our goal is to make an impact, so we鈥檙e developing something that organizations will want to use to create a more sustainable world.
鈥淭he social costs of not creating these solutions to reduce climate change are in the trillions of dollars,鈥 Dai said. 鈥淲e鈥檙e not going to prevent another hurricane or natural disaster next year, but these efforts could contribute to preventing one next decade.鈥
Choose a university that is committed to diversifying research to tackle pressing issues. Choose Mizzou 糖心Vlog传媒!