Mantra Venture Group Ltd. (OTCQB: MVTG) is a clean technology incubator that takes innovative emerging technologies and moves them towards commercialization.
The company, through its subsidiary Mantra Energy Alternatives Ltd., is currently advancing a state-of-the-art carbon capture and utilization technology referred to as the “electro-reduction of carbon dioxide”, or ERC. ERC has been under development since 2001 when Professor Colin Oloman began investigating it as a potential commercial technology at the University of British Columbia’s Clean Energy Research Centre.
Acquiring the intellectual property in 2008, Mantra Energy has continued to develop ERC, which is now on the path towards mass commercial application.
Overview
As anthropogenic carbon emissions continue to rise and the effects of climate change become increasingly evident, the need to address these issues has never been more urgent than now. While the realization of the concept of carbon capture and storage has been plagued with setbacks, carbon capture and utilization (CCU) is being increasingly recognized as an excellent solution. Mantra Energy Alternatives Ltd. is the proprietor one of the few viable CCU technologies. The “electro-reduction of carbon dioxide”, or ERC, uses electrochemistry to convert carbon dioxide into one of a variety of high-value products. Of these products, Mantra is currently focusing on formic acid and formate salts. Mantra also licenses an innovative “mixed-reactant fuel cell”, or MRFC, technology. This fuel cell offers several benefits over conventional cells, and, when used in tandem with ERC, can utilize carbon dioxide as an energy storage medium.
The Case for CCU
The Problem
It is now widely accepted in the scientific community that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere is increasing to unacceptably high levels. The combustion of fossil fuels, the primary source of energy for humans since the Industrial Revolution, releases the greenhouse gas, which absorbs energy re-radiated from the earth and contributes to global warming. Although the consequences are highly uncertain, it is presumed that anthropogenic global warming will result in irreversible climate change, threatening the balance of the earth’s ecosystems and the future of humanity itself.
In 2011, global carbon emissions from fuel combustion totaled 31.6 billion tonnes.1 The International Energy Agency’s 450 Scenario, which sets out a path by which global temperature rise could possibly be limited to 2 °C, requires an emissions cap of 32.6 billion tonnes before 2017. In the absence of the rapid implementation of technologies such as ERC, this limit will be far surpassed.
CCS vs. CCU
The concept of “carbon capture and storage” (CCS) has received a great deal of attention as a means of reducing anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. Such a strategy offers the enormous benefit of continuing to employ existing energy infrastructure and cheap fossil fuels while addressing the issue of global warming. CCS also, however, suffers from two crushing drawbacks: the necessity of storing massive quantities of carbon dioxide indefinitely, and unfavorable economic challenges.
While there are serious concerns associated with the storage of carbon dioxide underground or under the sea, such as earthquake triggering and water acidification, not to mention the liability associated with these effects, the primary failing of CCS is financial. Firstly, CCS does not offer any financial benefit unless there is a substantial cost associated with emitting carbon dioxide. To date, most of the countries of the world have no such cost, and in the few that do that cost is significantly lower than estimates for the corresponding cost of CCS. According to a 2006 paper from the Canadian Library of Parliament (referenced below), “Overall, it is estimated that capturing, transporting and storing the CO2 from a new gas- or coal- fired power plant would increase the cost of electricity generated by that plant by between 37 and 91%.” With no way to recover costs, this increase would be passed onto consumers.2
“Carbon capture and utilization” (CCU) benefits from all the advantages of CCS in terms of reducing carbon dioxide emissions while avoiding the drawbacks of storage and enormous costs. By treating carbon dioxide as a resource, CCU strategies seek to produce useful products that can be sold to recover the costs of capture and conversion. Where CCS would depend indefinitely on subsidization to be economically practical, CCU offers the possibility of being financially self sufficient and profitable. Mantra Energy Alternatives owns one of the very few CCU technologies and seeks to become a global leader in the production of green chemicals using widely abundant waste carbon dioxide as a feedstock.
References: 1. IEA, 2012. Global carbon dioxide emissions increase by 1.0 Gt in 2011 to record high. [online] Available at: http://www.iea.org/newsroomandevents/news/2012/may/name,27216,en.html [Accessed 13 February 2013] 2. Frederic Beuregard-Tellier, “The Economics of Carbon Capture and Storage.” Parliamentary Information and Research Service, Library of Parliament. 13 March 2006.
ERC Technology
ERC, or the “electro-reduction of carbon dioxide”, is one of the few existing carbon utilization technologies. ERC employs electrochemistry to convert carbon dioxide into valuable products. The chemicals that can be produced in this way include formic acid and its salts, carbon monoxide, methanol, formaldehyde, and hydrocarbons. While Mantra is exploring all of these options, the formic acid/formate salts technology is the company's most developed.The cornerstone of the technology is the ERC reactor. At the cathode of this electrochemical reactor (shown below), carbon dioxide, which is in a two-phase mixture with a liquid electrolyte, is electrochemically and catalytically converted to the product - in this case formic acid.
Electrons are provided by one of a variety of possible oxidation reactions at the anode of the same reactor, which will produce a useful co-product. If, for example, water is oxidized at the anode, oxygen gas will also be produced. This co-product also has value, and it can be used or sold to further improve the economics of the process.
Although the reduction of water to hydrogen gas at the cathode is thermodynamically favored over the reduction of carbon dioxide, the latter can be promoted by employing an appropriate cathode material. This material is known as an “electro-catalyst” and its selection is vital to the function of the reactor. Several metals, such as tin, are excellent for this application, and Mantra Energy is currently developing these catalysts further.
Mantra Energy obtained the intellectual property rights for the ERC technology from its inventor, Professor Emeritus Colin Oloman, in 2008. Ongoing research by Mantra Energy and its partners continues to reduce the energy consumption of the process, improve its overall efficiency, increase catalyst activity and selectivity, and improve the process concept towards a complete turnkey system.
MRFC Technology
On top of owning ERC, Mantra Energy also licenses an innovative fuel cell technology from Professor Oloman. This “mixed-reactant fuel cell”, or MRFC, has the potential to be cheaper, smaller, lighter, and have a higher volumetric power density than conventional fuel cells, which have struggled to be adopted due to their high costs.The advantage of MRFCs lies in that their operation does not demand the separation of fuel and oxidant. In conventional fuel cells it is imperative to prevent the fuel and oxidant from mixing, a requirement that necessitates the use of expensive membranes (15 – 68% of the total capital cost), thick, heavy flow plates (10 – 25% of the total capital cost), and a variety of other gaskets and seals.1
By contrast, MRFCs have no membranes and reduced seal requirements, allowing them to benefit from significant cost, volume, and weight reductions. Volume reductions may be so significant that, although MRFCs necessarily have a lower efficiency than conventional cells, they exhibit higher volumetric power densities.
Professor Oloman’s MRFC is a superb complement to ERC as it can utilize a variety of fuels, including formic acid and formate salts. Taken together, the two technologies represent a form of energy storage and offer the potential to use carbon dioxide as an energy storage medium.
References: 1. Aziznia, A., Oloman, C., and Gyenge, E., “A Swiss-roll liquid-gas mixed-reactant fuel cell.” Journal of Power Sources 212 (2012) 154 – 160
Video Demonstration
This video demonstrates the integration of Mantra's ERC and MRFC technologies, presented by their inventor, Professor Emeritus Colin Oloman. The station includes both an ERC reactor, which uses electricity to convert a stream of carbon dioxide into formate, and an MRFC reactor, which uses that formate to recover a portion of that electricity to power an LED light. Such a strategy represents the potential of carbon dioxide as an energy storage medium.
Carbon Dioxide as Energy Storage
Carbon Dioxide as Energy Storage
