Enzyme inspired complexes for industrial CO2 capture: Opportunities and challenges

In this paper, we have analyzed carbon dioxide (CO2) capture and hydration using enzyme inspired complexes. Particularly, efforts have been made to investigate the carbonic anhydrase (CA) mimic complexes discovered in the last five years. CA, a well known zinc containing enzyme, can hydrate CO2 in unprecedented rate (Kcat = 106 s−1). It has been recently used in commercial CO2 capture unit or blended with amines to enhance CO2 capture and ease the stripping. However, the uses of the native enzyme face several intrinsic difficulties such as thermal stability, pH stability and storage issues etc. Therefore, mimicking the active site of CA is of enormous interest among the scientific communities. These enzyme inspired complexes not only reproduce similar activities of CA but also thermally stable over a broad range of temperature and robust at drastic conditions. In this attempt we have precisely summarized the zinc and non-zinc complexes, de-novo enzymes along with the importance of supramolecular-scaffolds during mimic design. The current use and shortcomings of these enzyme mimics in industrial prospective are also discussed. Finally, the development of ab initio and classical molecular simulation methods for modeling enzyme mimics are discussed for the futuristic design of next generation CO2 capture catalyst.