Virus Is The Remedy For Industrial Chemistry

Posted on 01. Jul, 2010 by Ross in New Technologies, Plastics

Industrial chemistry has long been the epicentre of energy efficiency breakthroughs. With large-scale chemical manufacturing processes sometimes requiring thousands of atmospheres of pressure and tens of thousands of degrees of heat, the search for more effective catalysts, cheaper substrates and alternative synthetic pathways has dominated a century of achievement in chemistry.

Now a team of molecular biologists and materials scientists are claiming victory in their efforts to use viruses as part of an alternative process for the creation of a key chemical feedstock used in common plastics, solvents and fibres using a fraction of the energy.

Ethylene is still produced from Victorian-era steam cracking, which is a highly expensive and energy-intensive process. As a result, it has long been towards the top of chemical engineering’s hit list of must-improve processes. Progress over the last three decades has been disappointing, but the new research at Silicon Valley’s Siluria Technologies may change that.

The company’s research team have developed viruses which coat themselves in a secret mix of metal oxide catalyst particles, forming a tangle of nanoscopic catalyst wires. The huge surface area provided by this catalyst architecture has enabled Siluria to synthesise ethylene from petroleum feedstocks at temperatures 200-300