Mantra Improves Efficiency For CO2 Recycling Technology

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Venture capital group Mantra, which invests in renewable energy and environmentally friendly technologies, this week announced a major milestone in the development of its carbon recycling technology.

According to the firm, Mantra has observed an increase in current efficiency in its Electroreduction of Carbon Dioxide (ERC) technology through the use of a new proprietary electrode catalyst structure. The development is the first of a series of improvements expected by Mantra as they progress through a series of development trials.

“As a part of our latest development initiative, we replaced the tin granular catalyst previously used in the ERC reactor with a proprietary electrode catalyst structure,” explains John Russell, Mantra’s vice president of technology evaluation.

“The initial results from the new catalyst were exemplary. While operating under similar conditions, the ERC reactor reached a current efficiency of 89.66% with the new cathode structure compared to the 46.24% efficiency achieved with the tin granular catalyst. In the coming weeks and months we will be working to achieve even greater efficiency levels and to ensure long-term sustainability of the cathode materials,” he said.

Larry Kristof, president and CEO, added, “These initial results are very encouraging, and we are quite pleased with the advancements made by our partners at Kemetco Research to date. Such an increase in the unit’s efficiency will lead to a considerable decrease in overall power consumption- drastically improving the technology’s economic feasibility.”

The ERC process combines captured carbon dioxide with water to produce high value materials, such as formic acid and formate salts, which are conventionally obtained from the thermochemical processing of fossil fuels. However, according to the firm, ERC has an advantage over the established thermochemical methods for converting carbon dioxide to liquid fuels. While thermochemical reactions must be driven at relatively high temperatures that are normally obtained by burning fossil fuels, ERC operates at near ambient conditions and is driven by electric energy that can be taken from an electric power grid supplied renewable energy such as hydro, wind, solar or nuclear power.