In seeking a climate-friendly and economically viable process to capture and utilise carbon dioxide (CO2), VTT and its business partners have launched a two-year project called BECCU to produce speciality chemicals from the CO2 produced during bioenergy production.
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BECCU is a cooperative project between VTT, Business Finland and 11 stakeholders from various industries. The target is to complete a proof-of-concept for the integrated production of biopower and heat, transportation fuels and speciality chemicals based on using CO2 from biomass operations and hydrogen from water electrolysis or industrial processes. All stages of the concept will be demonstrated during the project using VTT’s versatile pilot infrastructure.
In addition to VTT and Business Finland, the following stakeholders are also participating in the project: Valmet, Top Analytica, Metener, Finnfoam, Kiilto, Mirka, Pirkanmaan Jätehuolto, CarbonReUse, Neste, Helen, the Chemical Industry Federation of Finland along with number of international research partners.
“We aim to create new business opportunities along the value chain, proving ultimate novelty for producing fully CO2-based speciality chemicals such as polycarbonate and polyether polyols. Speciality chemicals from polyols are selected to be the project’s primary target as they provide excellent market potential. Selected comparative P2X-concepts such as ash-treatment, SNG and methanol production from
captured CO2 will also be evaluated.
CO2 can be captured from air and from processes at power plants and production facilities. It can be then be used to replace fossil fuels as a raw material in manufacturing numerous chemical products. VTT has previously established that facilities that utilise and process biomass could be suitable pioneers for viable CO2 capture.
Although captured CO2 has been often studied as a raw material for transport fuels, low cost electrical energy is usually required to make these synthetic fuels viable. For the BECCU project, VTT and its business partners have selected chemicals, and in particular polyols – ((CH2CHOH)n), which are organic compounds containing multiple alcohol/hydroxyl (OH) groups – as the primary end products. Polyols are in turn the raw materials for polyurethane products, such as building insulation and foam adhesives.
The aim is to determine whether polyols can be profitably manufactured from bio-based CO2 and hydrogen (H2) for downstream use in current markets. The project is developing a concept for the entire processing chain, from the use of biomass in energy production all the way to the capturing of the CO2 and its use to manufacture chemicals. The end goal is to prepare this concept for the next stage where industrial-scale investments can be secured.
“Polyurethane products are increasingly being used in insulation for the global construction industry, so it is important that the fossil raw materials used in these products are replaced by bio-based and recycled materials, both as part of the Finnish chemical industry’s sustainability targets and to strengthen its market position,” says Henri Nieminen from Finnfoam.
“At Neste, we’re seeking solutions to reduce CO2 emissions by 20-million t per year by 2030. In order to achieve this ambitious goal, we’re continually developing sustainable fuels and circular economy solutions. We’re involved in BECCU because this project seeks possibilities for turning carbon dioxide from a problem into an opportunity,” says Neste’s Lars Peter Lindfors, Senior Vice President for Innovation.
“Valmet’s mission is to convert renewable resources into sustainable results. The concept of capturing biomass-based CO2 for the production of new end products is a good fit with our mission. Achieving climate targets calls for new solutions and verifying them with the whole value chain – and the BECCU project is ideally suited for this,” says Ari Kokko, director of Technology and R&D for the Energy Business Unit at Valmet.
Power-to-X processes to be piloted
The BECCU project will compare a variety of processes to capture CO2 from biomass used in energy production. Hydrogen, the second main raw material of polyols, will be produced via electrolysis using renewable electricity or supplied from industrial by-product sources. The team will test each stage of the process using VTT’s pilot and laboratory test equipment and assess the techno-economic requirements for their entire lifecycle.
The concept will also be compared to other Power-to-X concepts, that is, processes in which transport fuels and other chemicals, such as methanol and methane, can be produced from CO2 and H2.
The BECCU project’s total budget is approximately €2-million, and its main sponsor is Business Finland as part of Business Finland’s Green Electrification ecosystem, which was launched at the beginning of 2020 to promote the development Power-to-X processes.
“BECCU is one of the first co-innovation packages to be launched within the ecosystem, that is, in which research institutions and companies work together to develop new technologies and services. In addition to major driver companies, a significant number of SMEs are joining the project and getting involved in an extensive research programme. The project will play a major role in developing Power-to-X technologies and identifying new applications,” says Pia Salokoski, a leading financing expert at Business Finland.
Alongside the public project, the partners will also be launching their own development projects, which will utilise the project’s results and bring market perspectives to public research.
Ultimately, since many of the envisaged end products such as building insulation have a long lifecycle, the concept may even lead to negative emissions, that is, they may be able to act as carbon sinks by reducing the CO2 concentration in our atmosphere.
An overview of BECCU’s project intentions
VTT and its BECCU project partners are studying a process where 100% of the carbon in the organic polyol compound they produce originates from carbon dioxide.
The BECCU concept begins from the efficient utilisation of biomass feedstock such as agricultural biomass (Figure 1). All stages of the concept will be demonstrated experimentally in the BECCU project in cooperation with project partners.
Polyol production proceeds from the captured CO2 and H2, which is produced either directly from the electrolysis of water using renewable electrical energy sources, or from industrial waste-streams of other chemical and petrochemical processes.
The polyol manufacturing process is based on the production of olefins/alkenes through reverse water-gas shift (rWGS) and Fischer-Tropsch (FT) reaction technologies. The olefins produced are further converted to epoxides through oxidation reactions with peroxides and epoxides and then polymerised with CO2 to obtain polyols. This is the ultimate novelty of the project concept.
Polyols and polyisocyanates are the main building blocks of polyurethanes. Polycarbonate polyols are applied in polyurethane applications where high performance, including high hydrolytic, thermal and UV stability, is required. The most common uses are very high-performance applications in coatings, adhesives and elastomers. Other type of polyols to be studied in the BECCU project are the polyether polyols. These are currently the most commonly used with 70% global market share. All the target end-products represent high potential both in terms of carbon capture and utilisation (CCU) and economic performance.
A number of useful by-products such as transportation fuels are produced in the value chain of the targeted polyurethane end-products. These are taken into account in the techno-economic assessment of the concept. Also, comparative P2X-concepts for CO2 utilisation will be evaluated. This enables comprehensive analysis of the concept related to optional CCU approaches. Selected comparative P2X-concepts for the techno-economic analysis are:
- SNG: hydrogen boosting in biogas production sites.
- Methanol: CO2 use in methanol synthesis for selected industrial environments.
- Ash-treatment: CO2-based solid aggregates within bio-CHP production.
Techno-economic assessments will be performed for different process configurations of the integrated BECCU-concept for heat, power, fuels and chemicals production. Based on the techno-economic feasibility and LCA of the value chain, business opportunities, future demonstrations and impact of policy framework will be evaluated with the industrial partners.