Green Patent Blog®

Carbon Sciences is a Santa Barbara, California company that has developed a proprietary process to recycle carbon dioxide emissions into gasoline and other liquid fuels.

The company breaks down CO2 and extracts the carbon atoms to make new hydrocarbon chains.  According to its web site, Carbon Sciences’ process requires less energy and is more scalable than previous known techniques, which used expensive inorganic catalysts.

The key to the process is a multi-step biocatalysis that uses organic biocatalysts.  The company’s biocatalytic method uses inexpensive, renewable biomolecules to catalyze certain chemical reactions required to transform CO2 and water into fuel molecules.

Through nano-engineering of the biocatalysts and efficient process design, Carbon Sciences can operate these catalysis steps on a large industrial scale.  In particular, the company’s smart particle technology provides improved encapsulation of the enzymes that prolongs their effective lives and allows them to perform many reaction cycles.

The major components of the process are a CO2 Flue Gas Processor, a a Biocatalyst Unit, a Biocatalytic Reactor Matrix, a Filtration system and a conversion and polishing unit.

The Biocatalytic Reactor Matrix is the heart of the process.  It is here, in a matrix of liquid reaction chambers, that the large quantities of biocatalysts perform the multi-stage breakdown of CO2 and transformation to hydrocarbons.

The company’s CEO, Byron Elton, told me that Carbon Sciences has filed four as yet unpublished patent applications directed to its CO2 recycling process.  Elton expects the company to file 4-6 more new patent applications this year. 

Carbon Sciences owns U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2008/0277319 (’319 Application), entitled “Fine particle carbon dioxide transformation and sequestration.”  According to Elton, the ‘319 Application covers the company’s initial forays into carbon capture and sequestration.

The ‘319 Application is directed to methods and systems for breaking down carbon dioxide into micron- or sub-micron-sized particles, classifying or separating out the particles of a desired size and reacting those particles to form mineral carbonates.

Carbon Sciences’ technology extends into several aspects of CO2 capture, sequestration and recycling, including advanced chemical processes that can use flue gas and brackish water to capture CO2 emissions and scrub it to yield pure CO2.

Because the market for gasoline and liquid fuels is likely to remain quite large for some time, Carbon Sciences’ recycling process provides an interim carbon mitigation option:  use the CO2 molecule twice.

In yesterday’s post, I wrote about C12 Energy (C12), a Cambridge, Massachusetts startup that is apparently working on processes for capturing carbon dioxide by increasing the alkalinity of the ocean, thereby enhancing its ability to absorb and store carbon dioxide.  

I noted that there was no publicly available U.S. patent or published application covering C12’s technology, though the company’s president and chief technology officer, Dr. Kurt Zenz House, published an article in the journal Environmental Science & Technology describing his carbon capture method.

An alert reader pointed out that Dr. House’s CV is available through his homepage, and the CV has a “Patents Filed” heading, under which it lists “Carbon Dioxide Capture and Related Processes” and states:

Primary inventor of a novel chemical process that removes CO2 from the atmosphere and stores it permanently-International patent filed by Harvard University

Indeed, after shifting my focus from U.S. patents and applications to an international search, I was able to locate House’s patent application.  International Application No. PCT/US2007/010032 (’032 application) was filed April 26, 2007 with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and published on February 14, 2008 as WO 2008/018928. 

The ‘032 application lists the owners as Harvard (where Dr. House got his Ph.D.) and the Penn State Research Foundation and claims priority to two U.S. provisional applications (provisional applications are essentially one-year placeholders which are not examined or published by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office).

The ‘032 application describes and claims the carbon capture methods discussed in House’s journal article.  Claim 1 broadly recites the invention:

1.  A process for capturing carbon dioxide comprising:

providing water;

processing the water to generate acidic solution and alkaline solution;

neutralizing the acidic solution; and

capturing the carbon dioxide from a source of carbon dioxide with the alkaline solution.

One intriguing aspect of the ‘032 application is the synergy with fuel cell technology it claims.  Claim 33 recites an extension of the basic process wherein iron ions produced by neutralizing the acidic solution with reactive species provided from a rock and/or mineral source are oxidized in a fuel cell reaction to produce electricity.

Claim 15 recites another variation whereby the water processing step (to generate acidic solution and alkaline solution) of claim 1 is performed by electrolysis, and the electrolysis produces a halogen gas, a hydrogen gas, and sodium hydroxide.  The resulting halogen gas and hydrogen gas are then reacted in a fuel cell to form the acidic solution and produce electricity.

Another method, recited in claim 36, captures CO2 by reacting it with sodium hydroxide and generates chlorine gas and hydrogen gas.  The hydrogen gas may be oxidized with oxygen either in a hydrogen gas turbine (claim 43) or in a fuel cell (claim 44), in each case forming water and electricity.

The written description of the ‘032 application states:

Another benefit of the process is that some of the steps (e.g., the formation of HCl in a fuel cell) produce useful energy that can be used in other aspects of the process.  The energy may be generated, for example, from hydrogen production during the dissolution of reduced minerals (e.g., minerals comprising iron), electricity production through a fuel cell (e.g., FeCl2-HCl-O2; FeCl2-O2), or heat generated during the dissolution of silicate rocks and minerals.  Because the energy cost is a large component of the total cost for most conventional CO2 capture and storage technologies, the low energy cost of the process represents a valuable technological advancement. 

Dr. House’s article together with publication of the ‘032 application provides some interesting clues about C12’s technology and business model.  Whatever the company is planning, it wants to do it just about everywhere:  the ‘032 application designates countries and regions for patent protection all over the world, including the U.S., Canada, Europe, Eurasia, Africa, China, Japan, Australia and many others.

I’ve realized that limiting my posts to subjects for which there is publicly available intellectual property to discuss sometimes causes me to pass on reporting important technology. 

Thus, a new series - “Unpublished, Unpatented, but not Unimportant” - in which I will periodically report on clean technology developments for which I can’t locate a published patent application (in the U.S., patent applications are published 18 months after they are filed) or an issued patent. 

C12 Energy (C12) is a Cambridge, Massachusetts startup that recently secured a $4.5 million round of funding led by Sequoia Capital.  C12 has not made its plans public, but an article by the company’s president and chief scientist published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology is fueling speculation about a grand plan for carbon capture and sequestration.

Kurt Zenz House’s article, entitled “Electrochemical Acceleration of Chemical Weathering as an Energetically Feasible Approach to Mitigating Anthropogenic Climate Change,” describes a process of capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by enhancing the solubility of carbon dioxide in the ocean.

House’s approach involves boosting the alkalinity of the ocean by electrochemically removing its hydrochloric acid and neutralizing the acid through reactions with silicate minerals.  The increase in alkalinity enhances the ocean’s ability to take up atmospheric CO2.  

Carbon dioxide will then dissolve into the ocean and be stored as bicarbonate ion “without further acidifying the ocean.”  According to the article, over time the carbon will be permanently stored in the ocean:

On timescales of hundreds of years or longer, some of the additional alkalinity will likely lead to precipitation or enhanced preservation of CaCO3, resulting in the permanent storage of the associated carbon, and the return of an equal amount of carbon to the atmosphere.

The article explains that the method is “equivalent to the electrochemical acceleration of the Earth’s natural chemical weathering process.” 

I spoke to Dr. House today and asked him if he has filed a patent application on the process.  He told me that C12 is in stealth mode and he couldn’t comment on the company’s IP strategy.  Given the article’s internet publication date of November 7, 2007, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a patent application publish some time between now and early May.

Dr. House has a Ph.D. in Geoscience from Harvard University (see his homepage here).

Matter Network recently reported that the first coal-fired power plant constructed to incorporate carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology went online last month in Germany.  Vattenfall, a Swedish power company, built the plant and will operate it as a pilot.

The system captures carbon dioxide from the plant’s flue gas, compresses it into a liquid and stores it underground.  According to Vattenfall’s web site, most of the carbon dioxide will dissolve in reservoir water and slowly mineralize (see the project description here).

Vattenfall owns over 50 international patents and published applications directed to power generation technology.  Much of the older technology relates to nuclear power, including cooling systems for nuclear power plants.

The company’s recent patents cover removal and separation of chemicals from water or flue gas, including WO 2004/112943 (Boron separation and recovery), WO 2004/026486 (Assembly for operating hydrocyclones, in particular for flue-gas desulphurisation plants), WO 2003/074430 (Nitrate removal), WO 2002/040406 (Process and apparatus for removal and destruction of dissolved nitrate), and WO 2001/027593 (A method and device for measuring, by photo-spectrometry, the concentration of harmful gases in the fumes through a heat-producing plant).

While the Vattenfall plant and CCS process produces almost zero carbon emissions, the Matter story points out that compressing and transporting carbon dioxide requires a lot of energy. 

CCS may be an important transition technology, particularly in countries that get most of their power from coal plants, but processes that chemically transform carbon into innocuous materials are probably better long-term solutions than systems that require compression and transport of CO2.

Standards-setting organizations (SSOs) are industry or government groups that develop and publish uniform technology standards to ensure product quality and interoperability for new technologies.  Although rules vary among SSOs, generally private industry participants in the process have a duty to disclose patents or patent applications they own that relate to the industry standards under development. 

Failure to disclose relevant intellectual property can expose a company to legal liability (both through private lawsuits and by government agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)) and render the company’s patents unenforceable. 

Companies that do disclose their patents early in the standards-setting process are more likely to see their patented technologies become the industry standards.  Often, companies in this situation are required by the SSO to agree to provide licenses to their technology under reasonable and non-discriminatory terms.

When the 1990 Clean Air Act mandated that gasoline be reformulated to reduce evaporation and cut ozone-forming and toxic air pollutants, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) worked with the oil and gas industry to develop reformulated gasoline (RFG) standards. 

After the RFG standards were issued, the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (PTO) granted several RFG patents (which had been pending during the standards-setting process) to Union Oil Company of California (Unocal). 

In 2005, after Chevron Corp. (Chevron) bought Unocal, California consumers brought a class action against Unocal alleging that it had failed to disclose its pending patent applications during the standards setting process and had represented its technology as “non-proprietary” (the FTC also filed a complaint against Unocal in 2003). 

The class action complaint alleged that Unocal had manipulated and deceived the CARB and other industry groups into adopting RFG standards that overlapped with the undisclosed patent applications.

The patents at issue include U.S. Patent Nos. 5,288,393, 5,593,567 and 5,653,866, which relate to methods for producing gasoline having reduced nitrogen, carbon monoxide and other hydrocarbon emissions.  Unocal has since dedicated each of these patents to the public so they can no longer be enforced.

Last month, Judge Christina A. Snyder of the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles issued a preliminary approval of a settlement of the class action (settlementorder.pdf).  By the terms of the settlement, Chevron will pay $48 million to a class of consumers defined as all consumers who purchased CARB-compliant reformulated gasoline in California between January 1995 and August 11, 2005.

Obviously, it is important for patent owners participating in standards-setting activities to consult a patent attorney to review the disclosure obligations imposed by the SSO and analyze the company’s patent portfolio to determine whether patents and applications need to be disclosed to the SSO.

This issue is almost certain to come up again as new energy technologies emerge and mature.  Just last week, Matter Network reported that the Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels is developing the first international standard for biofuel production.