🧪Switching From Glucose To Formic Acid 🧪
My Climate Journey (Update 5)
Welcome!😊
I’m so glad you’re here!
This newsletter is my little corner of the world where I share what I learn on my journey to stop climate change.
Let’s dive in.
Recap
In my first essay, I explained why carbon capture is the best way to stop climate change.
In my second essay, I talked about why tax credits and carbon taxes/credits won’t help carbon capture scale.
This made me think we need to make products to scale carbon capture.
In my third essay, I looked at different CO₂-to-product approaches.
I analyzed the products using principles of physics and chemistry.
I found that many products won’t be cheaper than what’s on the market.
The product that had the most potential was glucose.
In my fourth essay, I checked out different ways to make glucose with existing reaction steps.
The economics of those reactions did not work.
This made me realize that I need to create a new reaction pathway to make glucose cheaper.
What I’m Sharing Today
I will explain why I switched my product from glucose to formic acid.
Why I Switched From Glucose
In this essay, I found that glucose is the best product for scaling carbon capture.
After more research, I found that I need new reaction steps to make glucose work.
Figuring out these steps will take time.
To move faster, I decided to start with a simpler problem.
This will help me make money.
I can then hire experts.
This will speed up developing the new reaction steps.
How I Came Across Formic Acid
When looking for a new starting point, I used my theory for scaling a deeptech company.
I talk more about this in this essay.
Imagine I need 20 parts to make my final product.
Instead of figuring out how to make all 20 parts at once, I focus on one part.
I build a business around that one part.
I use the profit from that part to make the next one.
I keep doing this until I can make all 20 parts.
When I make all 20 parts, I will achieve economies of scale.
With economies of scale, I can make the final product at a price competitive to the market.
The first part/reaction step to make glucose is the production of formate.
To make money from formate, you need to turn it into formic acid.
I plan to make formic acid, capture CO₂, and use the profits to develop all the steps to make glucose.
How Do You Make Formate?
The reaction goes like this:
CO₂ + H⁺ + NADH → HCOO⁻ (formate) + NAD⁺.
You can achieve this reaction using the enzyme formate dehydrogenase.
Material Cost
To make 1 tonne of formate, we need 0.98 tonnes of CO₂ and 0.02 tonnes of H⁺.
Let’s assume that CO₂ costs $300/tonne and H⁺ costs $3,000/tonne.
These cost assumptions include both capital and operational costs.
This is the current price of CO₂ and green hydrogen.
Prices should decrease in the future, but I’m being intentionally conservative to show the viability of a formate product.
The CO₂ cost is: 0.98 tonnes * $300/tonne = $293/tonne of formate.
The H ⁺ cost is: 0.02 tonnes * $3,000/tonne = $67.11/tonne of formate.
Energy Cost
The energy needed for this reaction is 107.1 kWh per tonne of CO₂.
Assuming 10 cents per kWh (or 10 times the natural gas cost), the energy cost is: $10.71 per tonne of formate.
Capital Cost
A bioreactor costs $9.69/hour.
It takes 0.74 hours to produce 1 tonne of formate with formate dehydrogenase.
$9.69 per hour × 0.74 hours = $7.18/tonne of formate.
Total Cost
Once you put everything together, you get $371/tonne of formate.
What Is The Revenue From Formate?
The main path is turning formate into formic acid.
You can do this with the following reaction:
HCOO⁻ + H⁺ → HCOOH
To make 1 tonne of formic acid, you need: 0.98 tonnes of formate, 0.02 tonnes of H₂, 0.006 kWh of energy, 0.72 hours to make.
Formate cost: 0.98 tonnes * $371 per tonne = $362.94/tonne of formic acid.
H ⁺ cost: 0.02 tonnes * $3,000/tonne = $65.63/tonne of formic acid.
Energy cost: 0.006 kWh * $0.1/kWh = $0.0006/tonne of formic acid.
Bioreactor cost: 0.72 hours * $9.69 = $7.02/tonne of formic acid.
Total cost = $442.61/tonne of formic acid.
Market Price
Formic acid costs between $400 to $800/tonne.
Cost Adjustment
If I change to more realistic prices ($100/tonne of CO₂ and $1,500/tonne of hydrogen), my cost drops to $185 per tonne of formate.
What’s The Catch?
You might be wondering, "If this was so obvious, why has nobody done this yet?" There are 3 reasons.
Micro-Reason: A Small Reaction Issue
I might have made the formate/formic acid process sound too good, but I didn’t talk about the cost of NADH.
To make 1 tonne of formate, 14.78 tonnes of NADH are needed.
NADH regenerates during the reaction, but the more it cycles, the less effective it gets, so extra NADH has to be added.
Even with just a tiny 0.01% loss per cycle, I would need about 1.4 kg of NADH each time.
The cheapest NADH I found costs over $200 per kg, meaning an extra $280 per tonne of formate.
That makes the process go from viable to too expensive.
From my research, NADH is needed because it provides electrons to CO₂ to help it convert into formate.
Since we need the electrons, not the NADH, any source of electrons should work.
A good candidate is H₂, or hydrogen gas.
When we split hydrogen gas, we get H⁺ ions and e⁻ (electrons), which are what we need.
This can happen with the enzyme hydrogenase, which creates the following reaction:
H₂ ⇌ 2 H⁺ + 2 e⁻
There seems to be no research on using hydrogen for both hydrogen ions (H⁺) and electrons (e⁻) in formate dehydrogenase reactions.
The only source I found is a paper published last month.
I don't see any reason why this wouldn't work. We’ll test it.
Macro-Reason: The Formic Acid Market Is Small
In 2022, global formic acid production was 750,000 tonnes.
The market is small so it’s unlikely anyone would start a formic acid business now.
Big companies already do well in the formic acid market.
They have no reason to change.
You would only start a formic acid company to capture CO₂.
Most people who think about this would not start because the market size is small.
A small market means you won’t capture much CO₂.
The effort to start a company to make this product would not be worth it.
In my case, I want to make glucose and I need formate to make it.
The opportunity is worth it for me because formate is part of a larger market (glucose).
General Reason: Nobody Went Through My Exact Process to Arrive at Formic Acid.
I reached formic acid by following a specific reasoning process:
1. What should I work on for maximum climate impact?
I chose carbon capture, while most focused on other industries.
2. Should I prioritize capturing CO₂ or finding a use case?
I chose to find a use case. Most focused on capture.
3. Should I store CO₂ underground or convert it into a product?
I decided to make a product, while some chose underground storage.
What product should I make?
I picked glucose. Most chose other products that won't succeed.
Most CO₂-to-product approaches fail for two reasons:
a) The product won’t be cost-competitive with natural gas due to fundamental physics and chemistry. (explained here)
b) The product has low market demand. For example, if formate is your only product, there won’t be enough demand to make a difference.
5. How Should I Produce Glucose?
The best option is plants. The method already exists and is the cheapest way to make glucose.
The problem is that plants don’t capture enough CO₂ to make a real difference.
This means a new process is needed to capture more CO₂ at the same price of glucose.
No process like that exists. Most would stop here.
I decided to develop a new enzyme process.
6. What’s the best way to start?
Most deeptech companies have an idea, raise a lot of money, and hope their solution works.
I focused on the simplest problem that would help me make progress on glucose.
The first step in my new method is producing formate.
I make money from formate by turning it into formic acid.
Then, I use that money to develop the next steps of the glucose process.
This follows my theory for scaling deeptech companies effectively.
Conclusion:
Along the way, I made different decisions compared to most people.
This led me to a result that no one else has reached.
Next Steps
I will work on getting into a lab to test this idea.
If you know any researchers who might be interested in this project, please let me know.
Until next time,
Ahmed