Carbon dioxide point-source and direct air capture using biocatalytic textiles

• Carbonic anhydrase reliably enhances carbon capture under eco-friendly conditions • Textile contactors promote liquid wicking for efficient CO 2 reactive absorption • Bifunctional reactive dyes offer a scalable enzyme immobilization approach • Enzyme catalysis shows potential to enhance ex situ mineralization • Biocatalytic textiles offer a diverse and practical platform for CO 2 mitigation Biocatalytic textiles were developed and tested as high-efficiency gas-liquid contactors for reactive CO 2 absorption using eco-friendly solvents catalyzed by carbonic anhydrase. The testing in lab to bench-scale systems with various configurations showed that biocatalytic textiles are durable and compatible with multiple different alkaline CO 2 absorption solvents across wide working concentrations, including secondary amines, carbonates, amino acids, and abundant natural water sources like pH-adjusted seawater and spring water. Biocatalytic textile contactors proved to be remarkably robust across diverse conditions, delivering similar percent CO 2 capture regardless of inlet CO 2 concentrations. By controlling gas and liquid flows, packing height and mode of enzyme delivery, single-pass CO 2 absorption efficiencies up to 95% were achieved at lab scale. Biocatalytic textiles were able to withstand repeated washing and drying, immersion and shaking in heated solvents, ambient dry storage for many months, and continuous solvent flow testing for hundreds of hours without performance reduction. Integrated bench unit testing with aqueous MDEA solvent and biocatalytic textile packing modules achieved a CO 2 adsorption rate increase of over 200% at low 1.8 L/G when compared to traditional steel structured packing. A straightforward enzyme crosslinking technology based on fiber reactive dyes developed in the course of this work makes fabrication and scale up possible using established textile manufacturing infrastructure, and a solvent composition based on seawater and wood ash extract offers potential for ex-situ mineralization of CO 2 to permanent solid carbonates for utilization or storage.