Chemical engineering researchers part of $300K project to create biological solution for methane reduction
Published: Jan 9, 2026 10:30 AM
By Joe McAdory
How can methane — a key contributor to global warming — be removed from the air? Chemical engineering professors Jin Wang and Peter He are searching for an answer.
Wang and He are part of a $300,000 National Science Foundation (NSF)–funded research project, “CAS-Climate: Construction of a bacterium with optimized methane consumption at 10 parts per million for climate change mitigation,” led by the University of Washington. Researchers will develop a biological reactor that removes methane by pulling ambient air through a system containing methane-consuming bacteria.
If successful, this technology could significantly reduce methane emissions from hard-to-control surfaces, slowing global warming in the near-term.
“Methane has a relatively short lifetime in the atmosphere, so methane removal can make a significant contribution to reducing global warming compared to CO2 (carbon dioxide) removal,” said Wang, the Walt and Virginia Woltosz Professor and 2022 recipient of Auburn University’s Creative Research and Scholarship Award. “In addition, many methane emission sources are not tractable, such as wetlands. In these cases, no emission-reduction strategies are available, and we must rely on methane removal from air.”
Wang said methane removal is intended to complement — not replace — traditional emission-reduction strategies, particularly in environments where emissions are difficult or impossible to control.
“Methane is one of the few greenhouse gases where removal can make a real difference in the near-term,” she said. “By targeting methane that can’t be reduced at the source, we can slow global warming while longer-term climate solutions continue to develop.”
One key challenge for biological methane conversion is the very small solubility of methane in water. To address this challenge, Wang and He proposed a novel concept of “dry” biofilm bioreactor. By removing the bulk liquid phase which presents the biggest mass transfer resistance, the new concept has been shown to deliver significantly improved methane removal rate.
From their lab inside Wilmore Laboratories, Wang and He have developed a reactor prototype which has demonstrated a methane removal rate five times higher than the highest reported value. They will conduct field tests to validate its performance in real applications.
“We envision designing a shipping container-based reactor that contains many modules of the bioreactor prototype,” said He, the George E. and Dorothy Stafford Uthlaut Endowed Professor. “It can be deployed at remote locations, such as near oil and gas fields, landfill sites or coal mines. The end goal is to develop a patented reactor prototype, validate it through field trials and collect sufficient data to pursue venture capital for commercialization.”
Wang and He are no strangers to sustainability-focused research, building on a long-standing collaboration that spans food systems, waste reduction and climate mitigation.
Their joint work includes a U.S. Department of Agriculture–funded project, “Circular Aquaculture Through a Next-Generation Waste-to-Feed Biotechnology,” with associate professor Zhihua Jiang; an NSF-supported study, “A Novel Multi-Tray Dry Biofilm Reactor for Methane Capture from Air”; and a $2.5 million Department of Energy–funded effort, “Intensified and Energy Efficient Cultivation, Processing and Conversion of Flue Gas Produced Algal Biomass to Aquafeed,” which aims to convert industrial emissions and wastewater into usable protein for aquaculture.
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Jin Wang, left, and Peter He have developed a reactor prototype which has demonstrated a methane removal rate five times higher than the highest reported value.
