SHU T T ERSTO CK
the electrons we’re generating into metha-
nol,” he says. “That’s huge.”
“Professor Bocarsly’s recent discovery
that the pyridinium cation itself is an elec-
trocatalyst for reducing CO2 to methanol is
potentially a paradigm-shifting discovery
with respect to our society’s energy prob-
lem,” notes University of Richmond electro-
chemistry professor Raymond N. Dominey.
Dominey points out that in order for so-
lar energy to replace fossil fuels and meet
mankind’s long-term energy needs, it must
overcome two hurdles: its high cost and its
intermittency. “Although much has been
made about the former, in my opinion the
latter is the real show-stopping problem
that prevents solar energy from becoming
our dominant source of energy: Electri-
cal energy—specifically photovoltaic
output—must be consumed as it is gener-
ated.” If you can convert that solar energy
into methanol in a truly scalable manner,
you can store massive amounts electrical
energy, which, he says, “can revolutionize
our use of solar energy, making it a viable
and realistic replacement for all of our en-
ergy needs.”
“In my opinion, the 96% electron ef-
ficiency of professor Bocarsly’s CO2 to
methanol process means that, if the kinet-
ics are good, this process could turn out
to be a silver bullet in terms of our energy
problem,” Dominey concludes.
AND BOCARSLY has something else up
his sleeve. Using this photoelectrochemi-
cal process, his group can make more than
just methanol. “We can make isopropanol
in our cell,” he tells C&EN. The trick is this:
They don’t use pyridinium as the catalyst.
Instead, they use substituted pyridinium.
“This is something we’re very excited
about,” Bocarsly says. “When you talk to
chemists, they say, ‘Oh, three carbons. We
can do something with this.’ ”
Although Bocarsly’s group hasn’t done
all the experiments to verify that all three
carbons in the isopropanol originate with
CO2, he says he’s pretty certain that’s
where they’re coming from. His group is
currently trying to pin down that mecha-
nism. “We’re very eager to get that mecha-
nism because we want to understand how
you make carbon-carbon bonded species
from CO2,” he says. “If I can put carbons
together to make something with three car-
bons, and presumably if I understand the
mechanism—which I admittedly have very
little understanding of at this point—then I
can make anything.” ■
WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG
GREEN FOR ETERNITY
Start-up companies introduce two routes to stay
ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY after you’re dead and gone
SARAH EVERTS, C&EN BERLIN
FEW PEOPLE like thinking about their own
death and less so the details of their body’s
eventual fate in a coffin underground or in
a cremation chamber. Yet as people con-
sider their environmental footprint during
life, concerns about one’s posthumous im-
pact has inspired entrepreneurs to develop
green alternatives to standard Western
practices. Two such alternative technolo-
gies will soon launch in either North Amer-
ican or European markets.
Environmentally minded individuals
have several concerns about Western death
practices. Some worry that the formalde-
hyde and other chemicals undertakers use
to prepare bodies for burial may leach into
the water table. When it comes to crema-
tion, they worry about energy usage: To
sustain temperatures of nearly 1,000 °C,
cremation of one body on average consumes
so much fuel that 573 lb of carbon dioxide is
released into the atmosphere, says biochem-
ist Sandy Sullivan, who has developed a
cremation alternative with his company, Re-
somation Ltd., based in Glasgow, Scotland.
Perhaps topping the list of environmental
concerns about cremation is that cremato-
rium smokestacks release mercury found in
dental amalgam fillings into the air.
Regulators in at least seven European
countries, including Germany and Sweden,
require that crematoria filter mercury out
of smokestacks. The U.K.’s Department for
Environment, Food & Rural Affairs is also
41 JUNE 28, 2010
establishing regulations, and it notes in a
position paper that “without intervention,
mercury emissions from crematoria in the
U.K. will increase by two-thirds from 2000
to 2020,” and without regulations, crema-
toria will also be “by far the biggest single
contributor to national mercury emissions”
by 2020. Crematoria emissions are expected
to reduce naturally by 2055, as mercury fill-
ings fall out of use. But currently, Sullivan
says, cremation is responsible for some 16%
of the mercury in the U.K.’s air.
The U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency does not regulate mercury from
crematoria smokestacks. “Good empirical
data on the magnitude of mercury emis-
sions from crematoria are lacking,” accord-
ing to EPA’s website. But the agency’s web-
site also notes that one study found that, in
2005, crematoria in the U.S. released about
6,600 lb of mercury into the environment.
Sullivan got the idea for his alternative
to cremation when working on a European
Union-funded project to invent safe ways
to dispose of cattle contaminated by bovine
spongiform encephalopathy (also known as
mad cow disease) and other prion diseases.
Sullivan decided to apply the technology he
developed to human remains and started
Resomation two-and-a-half years ago.
The Resomation process breaks down a
corpse using alkaline hydrolysis instead of
extremely high heat. The body is placed in a
steel chamber along with potassium hydrox-
 SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

ide at high pressure (10 bar) and a tempera-
ture of 180 °C, which is 80% cooler than a
standard crematorium, Sullivan notes.
The raised pressure and temperature
increase the speed of the alkaline hydrolysis
reaction so that the body reaches a similar
end point as in standard cremation—just
bones left to be crushed up—in two to three
hours. The alkaline hydrolysis method “has
a much lower carbon footprint than crema-
tion” because the tissue is not burned and
the process also uses an eighth of the energy
required for cremation, Sullivan says. Any
dental amalgam remains in the vessel after
the process and is easily separated from the
bone ash and sent for recycling, he adds.
Resomation has been approved in six
U.S. states--Maine, Colorado, Florida,
Minnesota, Oregon, and Maryland—and
is under review in a handful more, Sul-
livan says. Sullivan has sold three units to
North American clients for approximately
$444,000 each. The cost charged for the
service, he says, is up to the provider, but
it will likely be more than for a traditional
cremation, he says.
Price turns out to be an important factor
for those seeking cremation, says John W.
Ross, executive director of the Cremation
Association of North America. “A bulk of
the cremation market is favorably inclined
toward green cremation until you raise the
issue of price.”
Most “consumers are not ready to bear”
the higher costs of the Resomation pro-
cess, Ross says. However, he estimates that
about 10% of the market will choose an
environmentally sensitive alternative no
matter what the cost.
Then there are those like Susanne Wiigh-
Masak who wish to benefit the ground that
they get buried in. She was determined to
find a way to permit people to be composted
into dirt from a biodegradable coffin—
instead of proceeding to dust via a rotting
process in a sealed casket, a method that
doesn’t produce soil. And she wanted to do
so in an environmentally sensitive way.
BEFORE STARTING Promessa Organics, a
corpse-composting company in Göteborg,
Sweden, Wiigh-Masak spent 15 years as an
environmental engineer at a petrochemi-
cal plant. This gave her the background to
develop a technology called Promession,
which she says creates the conditions that
allow a corpse to compost to soil instead
of rotting. One obstacle that interferes
with humans being able to compost into
soil, Wiigh-Masak says, is that humans
are buried in one piece, which is too big of
a challenge for the microorganisms and
animals that typically turn organic waste
into dirt. Other factors preventing bodies
from composting to soil include too much
moisture in human remains and coffins
that don’t permit enough oxygen to enter.
All this typically leads to rotting, liquefying,
and decaying of bodies instead of a soil-
producing process, Wiigh-Masak says.
Her approach is sort of the antithesis to
cremation, in that it uses cold instead of
heat to break down tissue. Specifically, the
Promession process fragments a corpse into
pieces that can be managed by composting
animals. In a first step, a body is frozen with
liquid nitrogen and then vibrated so that
the body breaks into smaller pieces. Next,
the pieces are transported to a freeze dryer
under vacuum, which removes the 70%
water found in a human body. Although
Wiigh-Masak aims for Promession to be an
alternative to embalming, she says that this
vacuum process would remove any formal-
dehyde from corpses that were embalmed
anyway. Finally, with equipment developed
by the food industry, chunks of mercury and
other metals as small as 1 mm in diameter
are removed. The remains of the deceased
are placed in a biodegradable, cornstarch
coffin that is about half the size of a typical
casket. Buried in a shallow topsoil grave,
where more oxygen can access the remains,
the corpse will become soil within one year,
she says. Her apparatus does not require a
chimney or ventilation, so adds no residues
to air or water, Wiigh-Masak says.
Wiigh-Masak has received regulatory
approval to begin doing clinical tests of the
process in Sweden and Germany this fall,
with humans who have volunteered for the
procedure. Other tests will begin later this
year in South Korea.
Both Sullivan and Wiigh-Masak ac-
knowledge that they are entrepreneurs
in an industry that most people prefer to
avoid thinking about. But as Sullivan puts
it, “No matter how you look at it, there’s
just no pretty way to go.” The question
is whether you will go a little greener, he
adds. ■

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