Siluria's first application of its phage/catalysis approach is in the production of ethylene, the world's largest commodity chemical. The company uses a process called oxidative coupling of methane (OCM) to produce ethylene. The chemistry of OCM has been known for about 30 years, with no shortage of effort or scientific rigor to develop it selectively and efficiently for commercialization. “Nobody has been able to use OCM selectively for ethylene because they have not been able to get a catalyst that would convert the majority of methane to ethylene,” says Scher who explains that Siluria's catalysts can do this easily.Hot natural gas, and air are the inputs into a gas phase reactor. At temperatures several hundred degrees below what was previously achieved with conventional catalysts, Siluria's phage-designed catalyst transforms them into ethylene. The biological scaffold will have been burned off, leaving behind an inorganic material—in this case, ethylene oxide.Should this technology work at scale for ethylene production, it could replace a 70 year, energy-intensive process called steam cracking. Cracking consists of breaking long carbon chains, specifically naphtha, which is oil-derived, with very hot steam at temperatures near 900°C to produce short carbon chains in the process. “This is an endothermic process, requiring a lot of energy,” explains Scher. You have to keep putting heat into the reaction, usually in the form of burning natural gas, in order to maintain the reaction at 900°C or higher.”Methane contains very strong carbon/hydrogen bonds. “Siluria is pursuing an approach to activating methane at low temperatures to produce ethylene, a problem heavily invested in over the better part of refining chemistry, which is traditionally not able to be accomplished without radicals generated at high temperature,” says Turner. “Because this is an area in traditional chemistry where a lot of smart people have worked for a long time, if one is going to get beyond the state of the art as it is today in alkane activation, it is going to take a fresh approach like the one Siluria is pursuing.”Siluria, founded in 2008, is the second commercial venture to get its start from Belcher's work in this area. Cambrios Technologies Corp. was founded in 2002 on the work of Belcher and Hu to produce electronic materials. Belcher remains a member of Siluria's board of directors and a scientific advisor.“The path to improved economics in the chemical industry lies in innovation in catalysis,” says Tkachenko. Adds Turner, “If Siluria's technology truly does provide for carbon/hydrogen activation at very low temperatures on solid inorganic catalysts, it would represent a significant breakthrough and open a wide variety of potential catalytic transformations.”Going forward, Siluria hopes to discover catalysts for other high-value target reactions, including those for acetic and acrylic acids, phenols, and to increase yields from existing processes such as those used for maleic anhydride and phthalic anhydride.