CO2 scrubbing microbes discovered in underground laboratory
CO2 scrubbing microbes discovered in underground laboratory
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1129231
Publish Date: 2026-05-26 09:41:00
Source Domain: www.eurekalert.org
You might not know it, but the hot water and rocks deep within the Earth are teeming with undiscovered life. Dr. Tanvi Govil is one of the biologists studying this new frontier of microbial life that thrives in extreme places.
Govil and a multidisciplinary team of researchers discovered a set of microbes living 4100-feet underground at SURF that essentially eat carbon dioxide gas (CO2) and turn it into rock at an incredibly fast rate. The initial research, funded by the National Science Foundation, showed a vast improvement in the efficiency to sequester CO2 in storage underground—speeding up the process from years to a few weeks. Govil realized that instead of piping CO2underground, this technology enables direct removal of greenhouse gas emissions on site.
“The microbes we found at SURF help prove these biochemical reactions can be used to efficiently remove carbon from power-plant emissions. The discovery at SURF was the spark that started the whole thing,” said Govil, who is an assistant professor in the Karen M. Swindler Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at South Dakota Mines.
Today, Govil is leading the effort to build a library of microbes from different parts of the world that have the right properties for carbon capture. Researchers are combining the best attributes from each microbe to engineer enzymes that can convert CO2 from coal-fired power plant emissions into calcium carbonate—a mineral that can later be sold as a concrete additive or for other industrial purposes.
“The lab experiments we have done are based on some sample emissions provided by local industries. We took flue gases, and even leftover coal ash, to lab test and validate that this technology will be able to work in the larger-scale industrial environment,” Govil said.
The idea involves taking a large tank of these carbon dioxide-capturing enzymes and bubbling emissions from a coal-fired…
