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CO
2
AT WORK
Bayer has successfully tested its process for making polyols with carbon
dioxide at a facility in Leverkusen, Germany.
Credit: Bayer
Home > Volume 91 Issue 44 > Carbon Dioxide-To-Chemical Processes Poised For Commercialization
Volume 91 Issue 44 | pp. 20-21
Issue Date: November 4, 2013
Carbon Dioxide-To-Chemical Processes Poised For
Commercialization
European firms seek to convert early gains into market opportunities
By Alex Scott
Department: Business | Collection: Sustainability
News Channels: Environmental SCENE
Keywords: carbon dioxide, carbon capture, Germany
In 1912, the Italian chemist Giacomo Luigi Ciamician
published his theory that factories belching emissions from
the combustion of fossil fuels one day would be replaced by
smokeless processes that consume carbon dioxide. It was an
intriguing idea, but one that chemists of the day likely saw as
completely unnecessary.
Today, the idea of using CO
2
as a feedstocka free,
abundant, and renewable feedstockis attractive, even more
so because rising levels of CO
2
in the atmosphere are
changing the climate. But until recently, it has been assumed
that converting CO
2
into useful chemicals would require too
much energy to be economically viable.
Almost exactly 100 years after Ciamician made his prediction,
a growing number of companies say they are on the brink of
the commercial rollout of processes that use CO
2
as a
feedstock. With the help of catalysts that lower the energy
required to activate the molecule so it will react, they are
targeting the production of plastics, plasticizers, additives, fuels, and more.
A new field is about to emerge, Christoph Grtler, head of Bayer MaterialSciences catalyst program, told delegates recently at
Nova-Instituts 2nd Conference on Carbon Dioxide as Feedstock for Chemistry & Polymers in Essen, Germany.
And it is in Germany, Europes chemical industry powerhouse, where carbon capture and utilization is really being taken seriously,
Lothar Mennicken, senior scientific officer for the German Ministry of Education & Research, told the 150 or so delegates at the
meeting. German chemical firms including BASF, Bayer, and Evonik Industries expect to be among the first to commercialize
CO
2
-to-chemical technologies.
German firms have a leg up. The German government is midway through funding a six-year, $138 million research program,
dubbed FONA, through which it is encouraging academia and industry to collaborate in the development of CO
2
-based processes.
Companies are contributing an additional $69 million to FONA. This clearly shows industry is interested, Mennicken said.
A Bayer process to make polyols for flexible polyurethane foam is one of the 18 projects in the CO
2
program. The technology, which
Bayer developed with RWTH Aachen University in Aachen, Germany, uses a zinc-based catalyst. It has been successfully tested
using waste CO
2
from industrial plants. Every 1 kg of polyol made saves more than 1 kg in CO
2
emissions, said Niklas von der
Assan, a researcher with RWTH Aachen.
Bayer has started planning a commercial facility for the technology, which it calls Dream Production. Slated for Dormagen,
Germany, the plant will have a capacity of several thousand tons per year when it opens in 2015, Grtler said.
BASF is developing CO
2
-based processes in several areas, including polypropylene carbonate for use in a composite material that
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is an alternative to acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene. In one project, it is seeking to make acrylates from alkenes and CO
2
in
association with CaRLa, the Catalysis Research Laboratory at Heidelberg University. The challenge of using CO
2
as an acrylate
feedstock has been around for at least 30 years. Cracking the process is the stuff that dreams are made of, Nria Huguet, a
postdoctoral researcher at CaRLa, told the audience in Essen.
Huguet is developing a catalytic process which she expects will take at least another five years before it can be rolled out
commercially into what is a multi-million-ton-per-year market. But already, Huguet said, she can see significant potential for cost
reduction.
A cohort of German firms is closing in on commercial processes that use CO
2
, but European Union initiatives such as SPIRE, a
research program focused on public-private partnerships in the field of resource efficiency, have ignored CO
2
use as a research
option. They are still thinking carbon capture and storage. Were thinking carbon capture and utilization, Mennicken said.
If Europe is to consolidate any lead it may have in the field of CO
2
-to-chemicals technology, a more structured approach and
greater integration with industry are required, warned Gernot Klotz, executive director for research and innovation at the European
Chemical Industry Council, an industry group. The danger is that the science will be developed independently across Europe,
gaps in scientific knowledge will not be recognized, and the region will fall behind in the race to commercialize.
Time is not on our side, Klotz said. And he could be right. Some firms outside Europe may already be leading the race to
commercialize CO
2
processes. Among them is start-up LanzaTech, which was formed in New Zealand but now is based in Illinois.
It expects to go commercial in the next year or two with its process to convert carbon monoxide emitted by steel factories to ethanol
using engineered microbes. LanzaTech also is developing a CO
2
-based route to chemicals including acetic acid and 1,3-butadiene.
Unlike their German counterparts, the leading U.S. chemical firms arent pursuing CO
2
as a feedstock. Rather, start-ups such as
Waltham, Mass.-based Novomer have taken the reins. Novomer intends to start commercializing products, including a
polypropylene carbonate polyol that uses CO
2
as a feedstock, as early as next year, said Peter Shepard, executive vice president
of polymers for the company.
Novomers technology converts postindustrial CO
2
to CO using a solid oxide electrolysis process. A Novomer catalyst then
converts the CO and ethylene oxide to acrylic acid and other chemicals.
The process not only has a CO
2
footprint that is 40 to 110% smaller than petrochemical alternatives, depending on the target
chemical, but it also is relatively cheap to run, Novomer claims.
Grabbing CO
2
from the air, rather than using postindustrial emissions, presents a sterner challenge. A potential option is mineral
carbonation, a process in which serpentinite, a mineral found in mining waste, can be used to draw CO
2
from the air and bind it into
a carbonate. The CO
2
-rich mineral can then be used as a building material by the construction industry.
At large scale it could be done profitably, said Michael Priestnall, founder of U.K.-based start-up Cambridge Carbon Capture.
Although interest in the approach is high, more attention needs to be placed on process optimization, he acknowledged.
Looking further into the future, opportunities also exist whereby CO
2
could be used in association with renewable energy and water
to create energy-rich chemicals.
Michael Sterner, professor of energy systems at Germanys Technical University of Regensburg, raised some eyebrows in Essen
when he shared his vision that tanker ships could be used as the basis for generating methanol. Sterners idea is that sail-driven
ships could be sent around oceans to drive turbines and create electricity for electrolysis that would convert CO
2
and water into
energy-rich materials such as methanol.
Its technical photosynthesis, Sterner said. He argued that such a system could play a part in enabling the world to transition away
from fossil fuels toward renewable energy.
Sterners methanol-generating ships may be a distant reality, but folks at Bayer, Novomer, and other firms are confident that it will
be only a few yearsnot decadesbefore Ciamicians dream of factories consuming CO
2
starts to become reality.
Chemical & Engineering News
ISSN 0009-2347
Copyright 2014 American Chemical Society
Comments
chemical ali (December 3, 2013 7:33 AM)
You can lower the activation energy, but you can't cheat enthalpy.
Reply
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Carbon Dioxide-To-Chemical Processes Poised For Commercialization |... http://cen.acs.org/articles/91/i44/Carbon-DioxideChemical-Processes-Po...
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