Bayer reports start up of a pilot plant at Chempark Leverkusen that takes it a further step towards using carbon dioxide captured from power plant flue gas as a feedstock for plastics production. The new pilot facility, which employs CO2 captured at RWE’s lignite fuelled Niederaussem power plant, produces a chemical precursor into which CO2 is incorporated and then processed into polyurethanes. “As a result, CO2…can now be recycled and used as a raw material and substitute for petroleum,” says Bayer.
The new process is the result of what is known as the "Dream Production" project, a collaboration between RWE, RWTH Aachen University and the CAT Catalytic Center, which is run jointly by the university and Bayer. Researchers at Bayer and CAT recently achieved what they regard as a breakthrough in catalysis, making it possible “to put CO2 to efficient use for the first time.”
"There is an opportunity to establish Germany as a market leader for these technologies and secure ourselves a leading role in a competitive international environment," said Bayer Board of Management member Dr Wolfgang Plischke at the pilot’s inauguration on 17 February.
Bayer believes captured carbon dioxide “could offer an alternative to petroleum, which has until now been the chemical sector's main source of … carbon.”
The Dream Production project is receiving federal funding amounting to about Euros 5 million. With the investment of Bayer and RWE the total budget is some Euros 9 million. If the testing phase goes well, says Bayer, “the industrial production of plastics based on CO2 should start in 2015.”
Parliamentary State Secretary Thomas Rachel from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research spoke of a "revolutionary" approach that could completely change how we view CO2. "The debate on climate change has portrayed CO2 as the villain of the piece in the public eye. Now we are supporting research into alternative solutions that could make good use of CO2 as a raw material."
Professor Klaus Töpfer, founding director of the new Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam, Germany, said that the “carbon cycle must be closed…CO2 should be used as a resource and not disposed of as waste."
The process being piloted at Leverkusen is only possible because a suitable catalyst, “for which experts had been searching for four decades,” says Bayer, has finally been discovered. This was achieved by scientists at Bayer and CAT as part of the forerunner "Dream Reactions" project, also funded in part by the German federal government.
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