While CO2 is familiar as a greenhouse gas, it can also be the raw material for useful and profitable products such as foam rubber or coatings. In a consortium with European companies and universities, CyclicCO2R, TNO is investigating how this can be achieved in an energy efficient and sustainable manner. A combination with glycerol looks promising.
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CyclicCO2R is the acronym for Cyclic carbonates from CO2 using Renewable feedstocks. The idea is to convert CO2 into cyclic carbonates, which are useful not only for the production of foam rubber or coatings, for example, but also as a solvent and as an additive to cosmetics or detergents or to enable chemical processes to run more smoothly. The new technology may in the future have potential in other areas, such as fuel production.
The use of CO2 carbon in the production of cyclic carbonates is still a process that uses a lot of energy, says TNO's Coen Schuurbiers. "If you want to use CO2 as a sustainable resource, then it can best be combined with renewable resources, such as glycerol. This enhances the sustainability because not only do you reuse CO2 but also the glycerol, which is now widely available as a byproduct of biofuel production. One of the advantages of glycerol is that it supplies part of the energy needed to form cyclic carbonates."
TNO has formed the CyclicCO2R consortium with TNO’s Norwegian counterpart SINTEF, the universities of Newcastle, Aachen and Twente as well as (SME)-companies CRI from Iceland, FeyeCon from the Netherlands and Evonik. Coen Schuurbiers: "We are writing a project proposal that will be presented to the EU, which is constantly looking for ways to process CO2 in a sustainable way. Cyclic carbonates from CO2 and glycerol are particularly suitable, first in the manufacture of special products for the fine chemicals industry and later as a feedstock for bulk processes."
Coen Schuurbiers expects CyclicCO2R to help trade and industry to develop products profitably. "In the Netherlands this will chiefly concern knowledge of products and processes and the development and supply of the necessary equipment. But there are other opportunities for business. For example, cyclic carbonates as an organic solvent in lithium batteries."
