Last year, a frozen watermelon skin taught Licheng Sun's team how to design an ion transport membrane. This year, the same rind facilitated a collaboration between two Westlake University research teams, successfully converting carbon dioxide into high-carbon diols—a class of platform compounds with a market value of hundreds of billions of dollars.
Recently, the Center of Artificial Photosynthesis for Solar Fuels and the Center of Synthetic Biology and Integrated Bioengineering at Westlake University jointly published their latest findings in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. The research combines electrochemistry and synthetic biology: first, CO2 is electrochemically reduced to ethanol, which is then efficiently converted into high-carbon diols via biosynthesis. The process operates at a rate nearly 100 times faster than comparable methods, demonstrating strong potential for industrial application.
High-carbon diols are widely used in polymers, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and other fields. This strategy utilizes CO2 as a feedstock, paving a new path for green manufacturing.
Collaboration between Two Centers
Licheng Sun's team specializes in electrocatalytic conversion of CO2, while An-Ping Zeng's team focuses on biosynthesizing high-value chemicals from CO2. Leveraging their complementary strengths, the teams initiated a collaborative effort: using electrocatalysis as an "accelerator" and biosynthesis for "precision refinement" to tackle the challenge of converting CO2 into high-value products.