Carbon Dioxide (CO2) As Chemical Feedstock For Polymers – Already Nearly 1 Million Tonnes Production Capacity Installed!

Completely revised and extended third version of nova’s technology and trend report “Carbon Dioxide (CO₂) as Chemical Feedstock for Polymers – Technologies, Polymers, Developers and Producers” available

The nova report addresses the polymer industry, brands, technology scouts, investors, and policy makers. The report provides 100 pages of information around CO₂ utilisation for chemical building blocks and polymers.

400 million tonnes of polymers are produced globally each year. The amount has been growing by 3–4 % per year for decades and they have become an integral and important part of the modern world. Despite all their useful and versatile material properties, polymers face a major problem: 90 % of them are produced from fossil carbon and finally end up as CO₂ emission. This has no future!

The organic chemistry and plastics sectors cannot be decarbonised, simply because carbon is the main atom in their material structures. In this context, renewable alternatives to fossil feedstocks are needed, which have already been available for a long time, thanks to intensive research. Chemicals and polymers are already being produced today using renewable carbon, which is carbon from biomass and recycling – and also from CO₂. However, as the use of biomass and the recycling of plastics alone will not suffice, CO2 utilisation could be the solution to meet the demand of virgin polymers in the future (Carus et al. 2020).

nova-Institutes technology and trend report “Carbon Dioxide (CO₂) as Chemical Feedstock for Polymers – Technologies, Polymers, Developers and Producers” examines this alternative, renewable carbon source in detail: which polymers can be produced from CO₂, and by which processes? How far have the technologies already been developed, optimised and implemented in pilot, demonstration and (semi)commercial plants? Which companies and institutes are working on technologies to produce polymers or building blocks from CO2?

Production capacities for CO₂-based polymers
As nova-Institute shows in its report, the potential and the actual production capacity for CO₂-based polymers is much larger than commonly assumed and discussed. The production capacity, mainly for polycarbonates and polyols for polyurethanes production, already amounts to more than 850 kt/a today, with an average weighted CO2-based carbon content of currently only 5.4 %. Nine companies were considered, mainly located in Asia, Europe and North America and are shown in table 1.

However, many technical challenges still need to be overcome to enable the deployment of new CO₂-conversion plants on a widespread basis, but the use of CO2 as a chemical feedstock for polymers has been intensively diversified in the last years. By now, there are several successfully implemented technologies on the market or close to the commercialisation phase. The third version of the nova-Institutes Technology and Trend Report spans 100 pages and gives a comprehensive overview of the different production routes of CO2-based polymers that are developed and commercialised by research groups of industrial key players, start ups and institutes. A total of at least 40 companies and research projects from Asia, Europe and North America are working on CO2-based polymers and are presented in this report.

All market, trend and technology studies of nova-Institute are based on latest insights from technology and market experts and thorough research. The third version of the technology and trend report “Carbon Dioxide (CO₂) as Chemical Feedstock for Polymers – Technologies, Polymers, Developers and Producers” is now available for € 1,000 – in addition further market studies on various topics on the bio-based and CO₂-based economy as well as on recycling can be found at: http://www.renewable-carbon.eu/publications.