Collaboration expands the use of affordable and sustainable carbon-neutral and fossil-free formates for usage in industry, agriculture, and as liquid energy carriers
Richland, WA and Cologne, Germany — OCOchem and b.fab today announced their partnership to accelerate the production of biochemicals using the world’s first sustainably made CO2-based formate. Formates are a liquid energy-enriched form of CO2, useful as a sustainable feedstock for biosynthetic pathways to make carbon-based molecules in a resource-efficient manner to harvest and utilize carbon directly from CO2.
Foto: kindly provided by OCOchem.
OCOchem’s breakthrough is the result of integrating several proprietary innovations, including:
- In-house developed gas diffusion electrodes that achieve 100x greater CO₂ conversion than conventional aqueous systems
- Cell architecture 20 times larger than those used in fuel cell and hydrogen electrolyzer technologies
- Room temperature and pressure operation that reduces energy and equipment costs
- High formate concentration production, exceeding 35%, which enables cost-effective downstream processing
b.fab develops technologies and biosynthetic pathways for converting sustainably made formates into a wide variety of biochemicals.
“This collaboration expands the use of affordable and sustainable carbon-neutral and fossil-free formates in the rapidly growing market of synthetic biology and represents a large new market for sustainably made formates in addition to its uses in industry, agriculture, and as liquid energy carriers,” said Todd Brix, CEO and Co-Founder, OCOchem.
Both OCOchem and b.fab will start at small pilot scale as both companies expand capacity. The collaboration will start making small quantities of sustainably made biochemicals using OCOchem’s sustainable formate and b.fab’s bioprocess in 2026.
“This collaboration will enable b.fab to scale its technology and make biochemicals from sustainably made formates. Until now, b.fab’s technology was validated with fossil-based formates. Now, with OCOchem’s industrial process commercialized, we can close the industrial CO2 circle and bring CO2 back into biochemicals via formate, “said Frank Kensy, CEO & Co-Founder, b.fab.
Historically, biochemicals used plant-based sugars as feedstocks. Sugars and biochemicals have been principally grown, harvested and extracted from crops that use the same land, water and fertilizer inputs as human food and animal feed. Now, by making biochemicals instead from formate, which themselves are made from CO2, biochemicals production can be decoupled from and independent of food and feed production which expands biochemicals abundance, recycles biogenic CO2 emissions from industrial fermentation processes and lowers resource and pricing pressure on crops for food and feed uses.
Since opening its lab in 2020, OCOchem has scaled its Gas Diffusion Electrode by a factor 1500x and quadrupled its performance to make the world’s largest and highest performance CO2 Electrolyzer Cell. Early support for OCOchem was provided by the US Army Research Office and the Department of Energy and Washington State’s Clean Energy Fund. OCOchem recently announced completion of a multi-cell stack pilot plant at its R&D facility in Richland, WA.
About OCOchem
OCOchem is a leading clean chemistry innovator that has pioneered technologies that convert carbon dioxide and water into renewable molecules and materials. Focusing on decarbonizing global supply chains and building a more sustainable industrial future, OCOchem is pursuing this goal by utilizing a novel approach that integrates proprietary electrochemical systems with cost-effective and easily scalable production methods. OCOchem is based in Richland, Washington, USA.
About b.fab
b.fab is specialized in the efficient conversion of CO2 and hydrogen (H2) from renewable energy into biotechnological value chains. CO2 and water are abundantly available and therefore it is our starting point to build a sustainable bioeconomy. We use formate as our central mediator to bind and store CO2 and H2 (made from water) in liquid form. Our bioprocesses start with the feedstock formate, and we use Synthetic Biology to design specific pathways and to convert formate into value-added biochemicals.