Chinese scientists have created a method to turn methanol into white sugar. David Goehring/flickr
Chinese researchers have developed a groundbreaking method to convert methanol into white sugar—commonly known as sucrose—without using farmland or crops. This method could one day help turn captured carbon dioxide into food.
The new biotransformation system doesn’t rely on sugar cane or sugar beet cultivation. Both of these crops require huge amounts of land and water. Instead, the researchers used enzymes to turn methanol, which can be made from industrial waste or by chemically treating carbon dioxide, into complex sugars.
“Artificial conversion of carbon dioxide into food and chemicals offers a promising strategy to address both environmental and population-related challenges while contributing to carbon neutrality,” the scientists wrote.
This system not only produces sucrose but can also be adjusted to create other important carbohydrates such as fructose and starch. These developments mark a major step in producing food directly from chemicals, bypassing traditional agriculture.
From low-carbon chemicals to complex sugars
The study was led by a team from the Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). They used what’s known as in vitro biotransformation (ivBT), which is a method that builds useful molecules outside of living organisms using enzymes.
“In vitro biotransformation (ivBT) has emerged as a highly promising platform for sustainable biomanufacturing,” the researchers wrote.
“In this work, we successfully designed and implemented an [ivBT] system for sucrose synthesis from low-carbon molecules,” they said.
Sucrose is mainly harvested from sugar cane in tropical countries and sugar beets in colder climates. While China can grow both, it still imports around 5 million tonnes of sugar each year to meet its annual demand of 15 million tonnes, according to a recent post by CAS on WeChat.
With agriculture under increasing pressure from climate change and rising population, researchers are urgently searching for more efficient and scalable alternatives to grow food. Producing sugar directly from methanol, which in turn can be made from carbon dioxide, is one such alternative.
Turning carbon waste into food
In 2021, another research team from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (also under CAS) created a low-temperature method to turn CO₂ into methanol. This opened the door for carbon waste to become a raw ingredient in making valuable chemicals like sugars.
Building on that breakthrough, the Tianjin researchers developed a high-efficiency pathway to convert methanol into sugars using a series of fast, low-energy chemical reactions. They achieved an impressive conversion rate of 86 percent.
“This study established several ivBT platforms for the conversion of low-carbon molecules, which can be derived from chemical reduction of CO₂ or chemical/biological conversion of industry wastes, into high-carbon (C≥12) sugars,” the team said.
The system not only created sucrose for the first time using methanol but also produced starch using less energy than previous techniques. The scientists said this approach could work for a wide range of complex sugars, not just those used for sweetening.
Plant-free future for food and medicine
By adapting the same ivBT system, the team was also able to make fructose, amylose, amylopectin, cellobiose, and cellooligosaccharides. These carbohydrates are used not just in food, but also in pharmaceuticals and industrial applications.
“Together, our system provides a promising, plant-independent route for de novo synthesis of structure-diversified oligosaccharides and polysaccharides,” the researchers said. These complex sugars are essential for everything from energy storage in the body to medical treatments.
“This work thus lays a foundational framework for the future development of flexible and carbon-negative biomanufacturing platforms,” the team added.
However, the researchers also acknowledged that more work is needed before this method can be used on a large scale. They plan to improve enzyme efficiency and make the system more stable and robust for industrial use.
The paper was published in Science Bulletin in May.
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