If such a technique is introduced into industrial production, it will be a revolution.
For many decades, scientists around the world have been working on methods for converting carbon dioxide into biofuels and other useful substances.
The problem was that carbon dioxide molecules are unusually stable from a chemical point of view. It takes a lot of energy to break them down.
Created by Chinese scientists, starch is a type of complex carbohydrate found in plants using carbon dioxide, hydrogen and electricity.
The production of artificial starch will save water, fertilizers, arable land, because there will be no need to grow and process a large number of crops that contain starch — these are sweet potatoes and corn.
In addition, the synthesized starch can be used in the processing of carbon dioxide, common industrial waste and greenhouse gases.
As a result — reducing carbon dioxide emissions and combating climate change. And electricity for production can be obtained from renewable sources — sun and wind.
The discovery by Chinese scientists is also a breakthrough for the space industry, as it will become a sustainable food source for astronauts.
Studies have shown that starch and other complex carbohydrates make up 60 to 80% of the human diet.
Also, starch is widely used in industry: sugar production, food and beverage processing, printing, medicine, textile industry, animal feed, etc.
China’s starch industry is a $ 12.4 billion industry.
It took a group of Chinese scientists six years to make starch look like plants, but to do it much faster than in nature, where it takes about 60 metabolic steps to convert carbon dioxide, water and sunlight into starch.
The use of supercomputers made it possible to reduce the process from 60 to 11 stages, thus resulting in a starch that is identical to natural starch and the solution of which can turn blue when combined with iodine.
A set of enzymes and reaction conditions were selected that make it possible to convert a large amount of carbon dioxide into pure starch in just 4 hours of work.
This is about 5-8.5 times faster than it happens in nature.
In 2018, NASA included converting carbon dioxide to glucose, a simple sugar, as one of its centennial missions to ensure sustainable development on Earth and in space.
And starch just consists of a more complex chain of glucose molecules.
The high production rate and low production cost of synthesized starch will create an economic incentive for the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and its active processing on an industrial scale.
