Is Carbon Dioxide the New Black? Yes, If These Fabric-Designing Scientists Have Their Way
Each year the world releases around 33 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. What if we could use this waste carbon dioxide to make shirts, dresses and hats? It sounds unbelievable. But two innovators are trying to tackle climate change in this truly unique way.
Chemist Tawfiq Nasr Allah set up Fairbrics with material scientist Benoît Illy in 2019. They're using waste carbon dioxide from industrial fumes as a raw material to create polyester, identical to the everyday polyester we use now. They want to take a new and very different approach to make the fashion industry more sustainable.
The Dark Side of Fast Fashion
The fashion industry is responsible for around 4% of global emissions. In a 2015 report, the MIT Materials Systems Laboratory predicted that the global impact of polyester fabric will grow from around 880 billion kg of CO2 in 2015 to 1.5 trillion kg of CO2 by 2030.
Professor Greg Peters, an expert in environmental science and sustainability, highlights the wide-ranging difficulties caused by the production of polyester. "Because it is made from petrochemical crude oil there is no real limit on how much polyester can be produced...You have to consider the ecological damage (oil spills, fracking etc.) caused by the oil and gas industry."
Many big-name brands have pledged to become carbon neutral by 2050. But nothing has really changed in the way polyester is produced.
Some companies are recycling plastic bottles into polyester. The plastic is melted into ultra-fine strands and then spun to create polyester. However, only a limited number of bottles are available. New materials must be added because of the amount of plastic degradation that takes place. Ultimately, recycling accounts for only a small percentage of the total amount of polyester produced.
Nasr Allah and Illy hope they can offer the solution the fashion industry is looking for. They are not just reducing the carbon emissions that are conventionally produced by making polyester. Their process actually goes much further. It's carbon negative and works by using up emissions from other industries.
"In a sense we imitate what nature does so well: plants capture CO2 and turn it into natural fibers using sunlight, we capture CO2 and turn it into synthetic fibers using electricity."
Experts in the field see a lot of promise. Dr Phil de Luna is an expert in carbon valorization -- the process of converting carbon dioxide into high-value chemicals. He leads a $57-million research program developing the technology to decarbonize Canada.
"I think the approach is great," he says. "Being able to take CO2 and then convert it into polymers or polyester is an excellent way to think about utilizing waste emissions and replacing fossil fuel-based materials. That is overall a net negative as compared to making polyester from fossil fuels."
From Harmful Waste to Useful Raw Material
It all started with Nasr Allah's academic research, primarily at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA). He spent almost 5 years investigating CO2 valorization. In essence, this involves breaking the bonds between the carbon and oxygen atoms in CO2 to create bonds with other elements.
Recycling carbon dioxide in this way requires extremely high temperatures and pressures. Catalysts are needed to break the strong bonds between the atoms. However, these are toxic, volatile and quickly lose their effectiveness over time. So, directly converting carbon dioxide into the raw material for making polyester fibers is very difficult.
Nasr Allah developed a process involving multiple simpler stages. His innovative approach involves converting carbon dioxide to intermediate chemicals. These chemicals can then be transformed into the raw material which is used in the production of polyester. After many experiments, Nasr Allah developed new processes and new catalysts that worked more effectively.
"We use a catalyst to transform CO2 into the chemicals that are used for polyester manufacturing," Illy says. "In a sense we imitate what nature does so well: plants capture CO2 and turn it into natural fibers using sunlight, we capture CO2 and turn it into synthetic fibers using electricity."
The Challenges Ahead
Nasr Allah met material scientist Illy through Entrepreneur First, a programme which pairs individuals looking to form technical start-ups. Together they set up Fairbrics and worked on converting Nasr Allah's lab findings into commercial applications and industrial success.
"The main challenge we faced was to scale up the process," Illy reveals. "[It had to be] consistent and safe to be carried out by a trained technician, not a specialist PhD as was the case in the beginning."
They recruited a team of scientists to help them develop a more effective and robust manufacturing process. Together, the team gained a more detailed theoretical understanding about what was happening at each stage of the chemical reactions. Eventually, they were able to fine tune the process and produce consistent batches of polyester.
They're making significant progress. They've produced their first samples and signed their first commercial contract to make polyester, which will then be both fabricated into clothes and sold by partner companies.
Currently, one of the largest challenges is financial. "We need to raise a fair amount to buy the equipment we need to produce at a large scale," Illy explains.
How to Power the Process?
At the moment, their main scientific focus is getting the process working reliably so they can begin commercialization. In order to remain sustainable and economically viable once they start producing polyester on a large scale, they need to consider the amount of energy they use for carbon valorization and the emissions they produce.
The more they optimize the way their catalyst works, the easier it will be to transform the CO2. The whole process can then become more cost effective and energy efficient.
De Luna explains: "My concern is...whether their process will be economical at scale. The problem is the energy cost to take carbon dioxide and transform it into these other products and that's where the science and innovation has to happen. [Whether they can scale up economically] depends on the performance of their catalyst."
They don't just need to think about the amount of energy they use to produce polyester; they also have to consider where this energy comes from.
"They need access to cheap renewable energy," De Luna says, "...so they're not using or emitting CO2 to do the conversion." If the energy they use to transform CO2 into polyester actually ends up producing more CO2, this will end up cancelling out their positive environmental impact.
Based in France, they're well located to address this issue. France has a clean electricity system, with only about 10% of their electric power coming from fossil fuels due to their reliance on nuclear energy and renewables.
Where Do They Get the Carbon Dioxide?
As they scale up, they also need to be able to access a source of CO2. They intend to obtain this from the steel industry, the cement industry, and hydrogen production.
The technology to purify and capture waste carbon dioxide from these industries is available on a large scale. However, there are only around 20 commercial operations in the world. The high cost of carbon capture means that development continues to be slow. There are a growing number of startups capturing carbon dioxide straight from the air, but this is even more costly.
One major problem is that storing captured carbon dioxide is expensive. "There are somewhat limited options for permanently storing captured CO2, so innovations like this are important,'' says T. Reed Miller, a researcher at the Yale University Center for Industrial Ecology.
Illy says: "The challenge is now to decrease the cost [of carbon capture]. By using CO2 as a raw material, we can try to increase the number of industries that capture CO2. Our goal is to turn CO2 from a waste into a valuable product."
Beyond Fashion
For Nasr Allah and Illy, fashion is just the beginning. There are many markets they can potentially break into. Next, they hope to use the polyester they've created in the packaging industry. Today, a lot of polyester is consumed to make bottles and jars. Illy believes that eventually they can produce many different chemicals from CO2. These chemicals could then be used to make paints, adhesives, and even plastics.
The Fairbrics scientists are providing a vital alternative to fossil fuels and showcasing the real potential of carbon dioxide to become a worthy resource instead of a harmful polluter.
Illy believes they can make a real difference through innovation: "We can have a significant impact in reducing climate change."
Podcast: The Friday Five - your health research roundup
The Friday Five is a new podcast series in which Leaps.org covers five breakthroughs in research over the previous week that you may have missed. There are plenty of controversies and ethical issues in science – and we get into many of them in our online magazine – but there’s also plenty to be excited about, and this news roundup is focused on inspiring scientific work to give you some momentum headed into the weekend.
Covered in this week's Friday Five:
- Puffer fish chemical for treating chronic pain
- Sleep study on the health benefits of waking up multiples times per night
- Best exercise regimens for reducing the risk of mortality aka living longer
- AI breakthrough in mapping protein structures with DeepMind
- Ultrasound stickers to see inside your body
CandyCodes could provide sweet justice against fake pills
When we swallow a pill, we hope it will work without side effects. Few of us know to worry about a growing issue facing the pharmaceutical industry: counterfeit medications. These pills, patches, and other medical products might look just like the real thing. But they’re often stuffed with fillers that dilute the medication’s potency or they’re simply substituted for lookalikes that contain none of the prescribed medication at all.
Now, bioengineer William Grover at the University of California, Riverside, may have a solution. Inspired by the tiny, multi-colored sprinkles called nonpareils that decorate baked goods and candies, Grover created CandyCodes pill coatings to prevent counterfeits.
The idea was borne out of pandemic boredom. Confined to his home, Grover was struck by the patterns of nonpareils he saw on candies, and found himself counting the number of little balls on each one. “It’s random, how they’re applied,” he says. “I wondered if it ever repeats itself or if each of these candies is unique in the entire world.” He suspected the latter, and some quick math proved his hypothesis: Given dozens of nonpareils per candy in a handful of different colors, it’s highly unlikely that the sprinklings on any two candies would be identical.
He quickly realized his finding could have practical applications: pills or capsules could be coated with similar “sprinkles,” with the manufacturer photographing each pill or capsule before selling its products. Consumers looking to weed out fakes could potentially take a photo with their cell phones and go online to compare images of their own pills to the manufacturer’s database, with the help of an algorithm that would determine their authenticity. Or, a computer could generate another type of unique identifier, such as a text-based code, tracking to the color and location of the sprinkles. This would allow for a speedier validation than a photo-based comparison, Grover says. “It could be done very quickly, in a fraction of a second.”
Researchers and manufacturers have already developed some anti-counterfeit tools, including built-in identifiers like edible papers with scannable QR codes. But such methods, while functional, can be costly to implement, Grover says.
It wouldn’t be paranoid to take such precautions. Counterfeits are a growing problem, according to Young Kim, a biomedical engineer at Purdue University who was not involved in the CandyCodes study. “There are approximately 40,000 online pharmacies that one can access via the Internet,” he says. “Only three to four percent of them are operated legally.” Purchases from online pharmacies rose dramatically during the pandemic, and Kim expects a boom in counterfeit medical products alongside it.
The FDA warns that U.S. consumers can be exposed to counterfeits through online purchases, in particular. The problem is magnified in low- to middle-income nations, where one in 10 medical products are counterfeit, according to a World Health Organization estimate. Cost doesn’t seem to be a factor, either; antimalarials and antibiotics are most often reported as counterfeits or fakes, and generic medications are swapped as often as brand-name drugs, according to the same WHO report.
Counterfeits weren’t tracked globally until 2013; since then, there have been 1,500 reports to the WHO, with actual incidences of counterfeiting likely much higher. Fake medicines have been estimated to result in costs of $200 billion each year, and are blamed for more than 72,000 pneumonia- and 116,000 malaria-related deaths.
Researchers and manufacturers have already developed some anti-counterfeit tools, including built-in identifiers like edible papers with scannable QR codes or barcodes that are stamped onto or otherwise incorporated into pills and other medical products. But such methods, while functional, can be costly to implement, Grover says.
CandyCodes could provide unique identifiers for at least 41 million pills for every person on the planet.
William Grover
“Putting universal codes on each pill and each dosage is attractive,” he says. “The challenge is, how can we do it in a way that requires as little modification to the existing manufacturing process as possible? That's where I hope CandyCodes have an edge. It's not zero modification, but I hope it is as minor a modification of the manufacturing process as possible.”
Kim calls the concept “a clever idea to introduce entropy for high-level security” even if it may not be as close to market as other emerging technologies, including some edible watermarks he’s helped develop. He points out that CandyCodes still needs to be tested for reproducibility and readability.
The possibilities are already intriguing, though. Grover’s recent research, published in Scientific Reports, predicts that unique codes could be used for at least 41 million pills for every person on the planet.
Sadly, CandyCodes’ multicolored bits probably won’t taste like candy. They must be made of non-caloric ingredients to meet the international regulatory standards that govern food dyes and colorants. But Grover hopes CandyCodes represent a simple, accessible solution to a heart-wrenching issue. “This feels like trying to track down and go after bad guys,” he says. “Someone who would pass off a medicine intended for a child or a sick person and pass it off as something effective, I can't imagine anything much more evil than that. It's fun and, and a little fulfilling to try to develop technologies that chip away at that.”