Abstract
Renewable electricity-driven capture and conversion of oceanic dissolved inorganic carbon into value-added chemicals offers a sustainable route towards negative carbon emissions and a circular carbon economy. Here we present an artificial ocean carbon recycling system that captures and converts oceanic carbon sources into biochemicals through a decoupled electro-biocatalytic hybrid process. The system captures CO2 from natural seawater under very dilute yet realistic dissolved inorganic carbon conditions (2.16 mM) with high capture efficiency (>70%), low energy consumption (3 kWh kgCO2−1) and long stability (536 h). Techno-economic analysis revealed a competitive cost of capture (US$229.9 tCO2−1). Using a highly efficient and stable bismuth-based electrocatalyst, CO2 was further converted into pure formic acid (800 mA cm−2 at −1.37 V) and subsequently transformed by engineered Vibrio natriegens into succinic acid (1.37 g l−1). Therefore, our electro-bioconversion system represents a solution to sustainable biochemical synthesis using the ocean carbon sink as a resource.
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Data availability
The data supporting the findings of this study are available within the Article and its Supplementary Information. The atomic coordinates of the optimized computational models are also provided in Supplementary Data 1. Other data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request. Source data are provided with this paper.
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Acknowledgements
C.X. acknowledges the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2024YFB4105700), the NSFC (52171201) and the Natural Science Foundation of Sichuan Province (2025NSFJQ0017). X.G. acknowledges the NSFC (32230060, 32171426, 32522056), the Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation (2024B1515020102) and the Shenzhen Science and Technology Program (JCYJ20220818101804010, JCYJ20220531100006011 and RCYX20221008092901004). We thank beamline BL11B of the Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility and Shenzhen Synthetic Biology Infrastructure for providing facilities. We extend our gratitude to W. Jiang and Y. Gu’s group for their generous provision of the starting V. natriegens strains.
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The project was conceptualized by C.X. and was supervised by C.X. and X.G. C. Li prepared the catalysts with the help of B.Y. C. Li performed the catalytic tests. M.G., S.P. and M.H. performed the microbial experiments. C. Li, B.Y., H.Z. and Y.J. performed the catalyst characterization. C. Li, X.L., Q.J. and T.Z. designed the membrane electrode. C. Li, C. Liu and W.X. performed the XAFS measurements. C. Li, M.G., H.W., J.L., X.Z., Y.W., D.Z. and K.Z. helped in the data analysis. J.Z. and L.Z. performed the DFT calculations. C.X., C. Li, M.G. and X.G. wrote the paper with input from all of the authors. All of the authors discussed the results and commented on the paper.
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A provisional patent application (202310817899.5) based on the technology described in this work was filed in China on July 2023 by C.X. and C. Li. at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China. The other authors declare no other competing interests.
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Supplementary Notes 1–6, Figs. 1–54 and Tables 1–12.
Supplementary Data 1
Atomic coordinates of the optimized computational models used in this work.
Supplementary Data 2
Crystallographic data for the BEN molecule.
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Li, C., Guo, M., Yang, B. et al. Efficient and scalable upcycling of oceanic carbon sources into bioplastic monomers. Nat Catal (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41929-025-01416-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41929-025-01416-4
