Turning CO2 into sustainable products
In 2021, the EU-funded PYROCO2(opens in new window) project was launched to advance low-carbon solutions for the chemical industry. Now, as the project approaches its sixth and final year, it has announced(opens in new window) that it is in the final phase of construction of its pilot facility in Norway to test its novel gas fermentation process. Involving the use of specialised microbes to convert waste CO2 into valuable products, this carbon capture and utilisation process could play a key role in furthering Europe’s green transition. The new facility is being built at the SINTEF Process Technology Centre at Tiller in central Norway. There, PYROCO2 researchers will be converting captured CO2 and green hydrogen into acetone, an industrial solvent widely used to synthesise plastics and dissolve resins and adhesives. The pilot plant will enable project coordinator SINTEF to respond to the demand for new green and circular solutions. “When developing and testing technologies, strong research support is crucial,” comments SINTEF Research Director Duncan Akporiaye in a recent news item(opens in new window) posted on the organisation’s website. He goes on to explain how the facility’s proximity to research environments at SINTEF and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology offers clear advantages: “It allows technologies to mature before industrial deployment.”
Putting 700 tonnes of CO2 to good use
The demonstrator plant will have the capacity to produce up to 300 tonnes of acetone per year from 700 tonnes of captured industrial CO2 and renewable hydrogen. “There is no doubt that carbon capture and storage is necessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, to move toward a more circular and sustainable industry, we must increasingly adopt solutions that utilise captured CO2 as a resource,” Akporiaye notes. PYROCO2’s innovative bioprocesses will demonstrate that carbon capture and utilisation is both scalable and economically viable. Subsequently, the new facility will be used to show how gas fermentation can be utilised to produce other chemical, plastic and fuel products too, potentially revolutionising processes employed by high-emission industries. “By converting CO2 into valuable products, industry can meet increasingly strict climate requirements while maintaining competitiveness and contributing to a sustainable circular bioeconomy,” states SINTEF Chief Scientist Alexander Wentzel. As the news item explains, a large electrolyser is needed to run gas fermentation processes at this scale. The electrolyser obtained for the pilot facility will split water into hydrogen and oxygen using only renewable power, making it entirely emission-free. The system is expected to be delivered in the last three months of 2026. The PYROCO2 (Demonstrating sustainable value creation from industrial CO2 by its thermophilic microbial conversion into acetone) team is targeting broad market uptake of its innovative technologies for emissions savings of 17 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent by 2050. The project ends in September 2027. For more information, please see: PYROCO2 project website(opens in new window)
