More Than Just a Dream: Cli­mate-Des­troy­ing CO2 as a Feed­stock for Fuels, Chem­ic­als and Plastics

The sixth edi­tion of the inter­na­tion­al ​“CO₂ – Car­bon Diox­ide as Feed­stock for Fuels, Chem­ic­als and Poly­mers” con­fer­ence (www​.co2​-chem​istry​.eu) will take place in Cologne on 15 and 16 March 2018. More than 200 experts from industry and research are expec­ted to attend the sym­posi­um. Nova-Insti­tute, the event organ­isers, have once more man­aged to attract lead­ing inter­na­tion­al speak­ers, who will dis­cuss the very latest devel­op­ments in this future-ori­ented field. The con­fer­ence will shed light on car­bon diox­ide or CO₂-based pro­duc­tion tech­no­lo­gies for fuels, chem­ic­als, poly­mers and even pro­teins. A broad port­fo­lio of tech­no­lo­gies is employed here, ran­ging from chem­ic­al cata­lys­is to indus­tri­al bio­tech­no­logy. The event will be held under the pat­ron­age of Prof Dr Andreas Pink­wart, Min­is­ter of Eco­nom­ic Affairs, Innov­a­tion, Digit­al­iz­a­tion and Energy of the Fed­er­al State of North Rhine-West­phalia, who will also be the key­note speak­er at the con­fer­ence.

How to use CO₂?

Util­ising car­bon diox­ide (CO₂) as a feed­stock has been top­ping the agenda of innov­at­ive research pro­jects and com­pan­ies for sev­er­al years now. The under­ly­ing idea is to achieve a more cir­cu­lar use of the green­house gas that is CO₂ and, at the same time, to avoid addi­tion­al emis­sions through sub­sti­tut­ing raw mater­i­als such as nat­ur­al gas and crude oil with CO₂-based products. Inter­na­tion­ally, the tech­no­lo­gies used are sum­mar­ised under the term Car­bon Cap­ture and Util­isa­tion, or CCU for short. CCU embraces a whole range of tech­no­lo­gies allow­ing CO₂ and oth­er emis­sions, among them car­bon monox­ide (CO) and syn­thes­is gas (CO₂, CO and H) in par­tic­u­lar, to be used for the pro­duc­tion of vari­ous com­mod­it­ies.

Rap­id development

It is impress­ive to see how fast research­ers advance and espe­cially how swiftly the industry imple­ments their find­ings. Over the past few years pub­lic research fun­ders in Ger­many and the European Uni­on have increas­ingly under­stood the sig­ni­fic­ance of these new tech­no­lo­gies and as a con­sequence sup­port numer­ous research pro­jects, work­ing hand-in-glove with the private sec­tor. It is only a mat­ter of time before CO₂, along with crude oil, nat­ur­al gas, coal and bio­mass, is an import­ant feed­stock of the chem­ic­als and energy indus­tries – adding to the bene­fits of renew­able ener­gies and address­ing cli­mate pro­tec­tion goals. After the U.S. has lost ground under Don­ald Trump, Europe may now gain pole pos­i­tion. The annu­al con­fer­ence held in Cologne provides an over­view of the latest devel­op­ments and applic­a­tions; it has developed into the cent­ral meet­ing place of this aspir­ing industry. Lead­ing sci­ent­ists will gath­er in Cologne as will rep­res­ent­at­ives of start-up com­pan­ies and pion­eers in addi­tion to innov­at­ive large cor­por­a­tions.

What’s New at this Year’s nova Con­fer­ence in Cologne?

The sixth ​“Con­fer­ence on CO₂ as Feed­stock for Fuels, Chem­istry and Poly­mers” will show­case the latest CCU devel­op­ments. The first ses­sion will be ded­ic­ated to polit­ics, innov­a­tion and imple­ment­a­tion strategies, with talks by Prof Dr Andreas Pink­wart, Min­is­ter of Eco­nom­ic Affairs, Innov­a­tion, Digit­al­iz­a­tion and Energy of the Fed­er­al State of North Rhine-West­phalia, Jür­gen Tied­je (European Com­mis­sion), Dr Helmut Löwe, (Fed­er­al Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion and Research (BMBF), DE), Lin­sey Gar­cia-Gonza­lez and Heleen de Wever (Vlem­ish Insti­tute for Tech­no­logy (VITO), BE) and Thomas Ross (Coun­cil for Sci­entif­ic and Indus­tri­al Research (CSIR), ZA). These lec­tures will be fol­lowed by deep insights into the field of sus­tain­ab­il­ity and polit­ic­al frame­works. Prof Chris­ti­an Brey­er of Lap­peen­ranta Uni­ver­sity, Fin­land, will ana­lyse the poten­tial of glob­al renew­able ener­gies for the util­isa­tion of CO₂. Lisa Buch­ner, who is with the Ger­man Envir­on­ment Agency (UBA), will dis­cuss CCU tech­no­lo­gies against the back­ground of the EU Emis­sions Trad­ing Sys­tem (ETS). Dr Juha-Pekka Pitkän­en, VTT Tech­nic­al Research Centre of Fin­land, will shed light on the pro­duc­tion of single-cell pro­teins for the pro­duc­tion of feed pro­teins from CO₂ and elec­tri­city. Daniel Egger from Cli­me­works AG, Switzer­land, will give par­ti­cipants insights into the cur­rent status of his company’s tech­no­logy that allows CO₂ to be cap­tured straight from the atmo­sphere, as well as provid­ing details on the exper­i­ence of con­struct­ing the first such pilot plant of its kind. The second con­fer­ence day will be more tech­nic­al in nature, focus­ing on the CO₂-based pro­duc­tion of chem­ic­als, poly­mers and fuels. The ses­sion on chem­ic­als and poly­mers includes, among oth­ers, present­a­tions by speak­ers from Wagen­in­gen Uni­ver­sity (NL) and the Catalan ICIQ/ICREA research insti­tute. The high­lights of the morn­ing ses­sion will be the joint present­a­tion by Nor­d­ic Blue Crude AS (Nor­way) and sun­fire GmbH (Ger­many), which are cooper­at­ing to build up a demon­stra­tion plant for the pro­duc­tion of syn­thet­ic naph­tha (blue crude) in Nor­way, as well as the insights gran­ted into the latest devel­op­ments at Avan­ti­um (NL) and Cov­estro (DE), which are ded­ic­ated to the pro­duc­tion of build­ing block chem­ic­als and poly­mers. The pro­duc­tion of sus­tain­able fuels based on CO₂ has the clear poten­tial to bene­fit both industry and envir­on­ment. Blue crude, men­tioned above, and in par­tic­u­lar meth­an­ol, which may also be used as a plat­form chem­ic­al, share excel­lent pro­spects for applic­a­tion. Dr Günter Harp, a con­sult­ant to the Iceland­ic Car­bon Recyc­ling com­pany is one of the speak­ers who will dis­cuss pos­sible fields of meth­an­ol applic­a­tion (“Meth­an­ol as Key for Indus­tri­al Sym­bi­os­is between Chem­istry and Steel”). Mit­subishi Hita­chi Power Sys­tems Europe GmbH, which relies on innov­at­ive pro­cess chains to syn­thes­ise meth­an­ol, is work­ing with­in the scope of the European OptiMeH research pro­ject to build a pilot plant for the emis­sions-based pro­duc­tion of meth­an­ol togeth­er with Car­bon Recyc­ling. With its bio­tech­no­lo­gic­ally pro­duced butan­ol, the Amer­ic­an Phytonix Cor­por­a­tion, the conference’s gold spon­sor, blazes a trail for com­mer­cial use in the pro­duc­tion of fuels. Bruce Dannen­berg, CEO and founder of the com­pany, will give an account of thrill­ing devel­op­ments and col­lab­or­a­tion pro­jects at his com­pany. Pro­ject man­agers from Thyssen­k­rupp AG and Fraunhofer Insti­tute for Envir­on­ment­al, Safety, and Energy Tech­no­logy UMSICHT (DE) will present the Car­bon₂Chem pro­ject, which is look­ing into the util­isa­tion of steel industry emis­sions for the sus­tain­able pro­duc­tion of fuels. The Finnish VTT com­pany har­nesses decent­ral Fisc­her-Tropsch pro­cesses to pro­duce blue crude. SkyN­RG (NL) will dis­cuss chal­lenges and oppor­tun­it­ies for the pro­duc­tion of sus­tain­able avi­ation fuels using CO₂-based tech­no­lo­gies. In their present­a­tion, bse Engin­eer­ing Leipzig GmbH (DE) will focus on energy con­sump­tion in the CO₂-to-fuels con­ver­sion pro­cess. Nova-Insti­tute wishes to thank Prof Dr Andreas Pink­wart, Min­is­ter of Eco­nom­ic Affairs, Innov­a­tion, Digit­al­iz­a­tion and Energy of the Fed­er­al State of North Rhine-West­phalia, for act­ing as pat­ron of this con­fer­ence, as well as Phytonix Cor­por­a­tion, the event’s gold spon­sor, and EnergieAgentur.NRW, the conference’s premi­um part­ner, for sup­port­ing the con­ven­tion. For fur­ther inform­a­tion and to register online for the ​“CO₂ – Car­bon Diox­ide as Feed­stock for Fuels, Chem­ic­als and Poly­mers” con­fer­ence, please vis­it www​.co2​-chem​istry​.eu. The detailed and latest ver­sion of the con­fer­ence pro­gramme is avail­able for down­load under www​.co2​-chem​istry​.eu/​m​e​d​i​a​/​2​0​1​8​/​L​e​a​f​l​e​t​/​C​C​U​-​L​e​a​f​l​e​t.pdf. Source: nova-Insti­tut GmbH