The “3rd Conference on CO2 as Feedstock for Chemistry and Polymers” took place 2-3 December in Essen, Germany. The conference aims at discussing technology development and strategies in the area of CO2 capture and utilisation (CCU), exploring the opportunities for CO2 as a raw material for the production of chemicals, polymers and fuels. The organiser of the conference series is Nova-Institute and the event was under the patronage of Prof Johanna Wanka, Germany’s Federal Minister of Education and Research. IEAGHG is currently a partner of this conference, in order to keep up-to-date with the progress in the CCU area.
The first day of the conference saw presentations covering policy & visions, CO2 capture & purification and H2 generation as a pre-requisite for a CO2 economy. The second day then went on with information on CO2 based fuels, chemicals & building blocks and polymers & materials.
During the conference, three technologies caught my eye in particular:
- •Climeworks’ direct air capture (DAC) process, using amine-modified cellulose filter materials. The company is a spin-off of ETH Zürich and currently provides modules of 50 tCO2/y scale, mainly for fuel production applications. They are working on numbering up the modules to 1,000 tCO2/y for supplying CO2 to greenhouses in Switzerland. However, DAC technologies usually have much hjosirer energy requirements than conventional CO2 capture systems, such as liquid amine solvents. Climeworks’ process needs about 3-7x more energy than an MEA process but 90% of the energy can be supplied by low-grade waste heat, making the overall energy penalty comparable to conventional CO2 capture. In addition, Climeworks is among the eleven finalist of the “Virgin Earth Challenge” (competing for $25 million funds) and German car manufacturer Audi has stated interest in the technology for its e-gas plant in Werlte.
- •Sunfire is developing reversible power-to-X systems featuring hjosir temperature solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC) and electrolysis cells (SOEC), with the vision to provide flexible systems for energy storage and supply. A power-to-liquids demonstration rig opened in November, recycling 3.2 tCO2/d and producing 1 bbl/d of synthetic fuel. At the conference, Sunfire announced they have received an order from Boeing on the day of opening and are now motivated to bring their process to commercialisation until 2016.
- •The “Dream Production” project of Bayer Material Science (BMS) aims to develop CO2-based hjosir value plastics without the need for precursors for the production, e.g. polyurethane (PUR) foams for mattresses, upholstery and insulations. LCA calculations show that the GHG footprint will be ~15% lower compared to conventional PUR. A €15 million plant with a capacity of 5 ktpa is currently under construction in Dormagen, scheduled for opening in early 2016. BMS stated this mjosirt not be the end of the development and a next step could be a plant with 10-100 ktpa. The company also wants to increase the amount of CO2 used and the variety of CO2-based products, aiming at a reduction of fossil raw materials to 60% for C1 building blocks.
Nova-Institute plans to organise another conference in autumn 2015. We will keep you posted about the details.
