Biology in the Chemical Sector

Following our first publication, I caught up with Manou Davies, CTO at Anodyne Chemistries, to talk in greater detail about their missions, goals, and some of the issues facing the decarbonisation of the chemical manufacturing industry.

“What do we want the chemical sector of the future to look like?”

The chemical sector, as Manou pointed out early on in our conversation, is responsible for a huge amount of the world’s emissions, and it plays a large part in our everyday lives. Almost everything we touch has its roots in the chemical sector. However, it’s a notoriously difficult industry to decarbonise. The two main issues, she explained, go hand in hand. One of them is that the entire sector is reliant on petro-chemical feedstocks, meaning everything comes from coal, oil and natural gas.

“Nature is the only industry that carries out chemical production on a global scale already.”

The other issue is that the processes for converting these feedstocks into chemicals of interest are very energy intensive, involving high pressures and temperatures, as well as producing large amounts of byproducts that have to be managed. This process itself is responsible for a large amount of emissions.

So, Manou concluded that both new feedstocks, and new manufacturing methods must be unlocked and utilised. That corresponds to quite a large problem, considering the widespread impact of the chemical sector and the vast multitude of chemicals that we rely on. Complex questions as to where to start, how to structure their solutions in a way which builds the ground up, then come into view.

Anodyne’s response to this, and their view on how to solve these issues then came into question. Their solution? A total rethink of feedstocks and processes alike, ensuring that the solution is not centred around replacing the production of just one chemical, but looking at the entire set of feedstocks. But how to implement this strategy is the hard part.

Identifying the production of ammonia as responsible for 2% of the world’s emissions, Anodyne started there, and found that there were microbes in the soil that have the same reaction, nitrogen to ammonia, but at room temperature and atmospheric pressure. Manou used this as an example of their willingness to bring together the two worlds of nature and industry, and for that to serve as a framework for their operations.

I think Anodyne and their mission to integrate biological processes into chemical manufacturing is representative of the different types of innovation taking place in the science industry in its mission to decarbonise and adopt sustainable practices.

Author: Charlie Branton