Biocarbon based Polymers for Sustainable Material Development

Project Information

D-Carbonize

Grant agreement ID: 101073223

DOI

10.3030/101073223

EC signature date 6 July 2022

Start date 1 March 2023

End date 30 November 2027

Funded under

• Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)

Total cost

No data

EU contribution

€ 3 168 331,20

Coordinated by

FUNDACIO INSTITUT CATALA D'INVESTIGACIO QUIMICA
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - D-Carbonize (Biocarbon based Polymers for Sustainable Material Development)

Reporting period: 2023-03-01 to 2025-02-28

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Our societies heavily depends on the use of fossil fuels to supply us with an energy source and a feedstock for chemical synthesis. Ever since the industrial revolution, carbon emissions have risen culminating in the highest recorded CO2 concentration around 430 ppm, see https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/. As increasing carbon emissions are linked with adverse effects on our climate, scientists are increasingly looking for ways to combat this undesired scenario. One way of addressing the problem is to make use of renewable carbon sources for chemical synthesis and our energy needs, thereby directly and positively affecting carbon management associated with these activities. By overall lowering carbon emissions, a start can be made to better control the carbon cycle and preserve a sustainable future. The D-Carbonize project aims to design new chemical value chains that are built on the use of renewable carbon and to use it as a starting point for more sustainable materials with a significantly better carbon footprint. Further to this, the consortium entails the presence of experts in catalysis, a key enabling technology that will empower the design, optimization and implementation of new chemical processes that allow to fabricate new types of polymerizable monomers from biomass and carbon dioxide, their utilization in novel polymer synthesis and the use of the latter in forging more sustainable materials relevant to specific consumer goods. While catalysis will allow for the preparation of biocarbon based monomers, polymers and materials on one side, it also enables the efficient recycling of the atoms present in the final materials by breaking down these chemical structures into smaller molecules that can be reused. By transversally training the involved students active in D-Carbonize, they will collaborate with companies with interest in new and effective biomass use and recycling technologies, creating a synergistic approximation for the envisioned looping of our feedstock

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

of the D-Carbonize team is plural. First, various team members have been able to use homo- and heterogeneous catalysis approaches to valorize both carbon dioxide into heterocycles such as cyclic carbonates, lactones and cyclic acetals, and various sources of biomass (such as terpenes) allowing to access new types of monomer structures with an improved carbon footprint. Such monomers have been shown to be amenable to post-synthetic manipulations. Other members have used these monomers or related ones to produce new types of biobased poly-carbonates and -esters, and the presence of specific functional groups empowered created a way to change both the properties of these polymers as well as their cross-linking ability.
As part of the D-Carbonize program, various partners have looked into novel catalytic recycling methods for polycarbonates under organocatalytic and metal catalyst control. The efficient conversion of such polycarbonates can be achieved by, for instance, water as a green additive producing thereby synthetically useful diols that can be recycled into polyesters. Alternatively, catalytic hydrogenation under base metal (e.g. manganese) catalysis also affords diol-based synthons with high efficiency. Some of the partners have already been able to cross-link selected polymers thereby creating new materials (example: films and coatings) with modular properties, and their catalytic recycling is under current scrutiny to close the loop. For the entire value chain it is important to test these bench-based processes and materials in commercial laboratories and the implication of industrial partners is vital to assess the scalability of the approaches, and to optimize process intensification via continuous flow techniques. These aspects are part of the second part of the execution time within D-Carbonize.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

As opposed to the current state of the art, the main achievement made in the D-Carbonize project thus far is the reuse of various biocarbon precursors and their transformation into new monomers, polymers and functional materials enabled through catalysis approaches. The combined approach has resulted in defining the contours of a new value chain that is characterized by a lower carbon footprint supporting the initial hypotheses and expectations. As such, the catalytic processes offer a realistic footmark technology allowing for potential use within and transfer to commercial laboratories, implementation and scale up. More specifically, these lower-carbon emission processes offer a new paradigm shift where fossil-fuel derived products and processes can be challenged by those based on biobased sources offering leverage to partially or even fully replace them and creating synergies between green chemistry principles and new business opportunities arising from the results. For instance, coating type materials have already been forged from biomass using homogeneous catalysis, with the final products demonstrating both thermal and mechanical properties that are at least similar to current commercial coatings. While this initial validation is promising, further research is required to understand in more detail how favorable the new technologies are in terms of carbon footprint, practicality, scaling and adaptivity.

The D-carbonize will organize during the second stage of its development 12 industrial internships at various companies. The latter are involved in or developing materials that depend currently on fossil-fuel technologies. The planned secondments will help to validate as much as possible the findings of the project in more relevant settings. Apart from these secondments, the industrial partners will assist in the scale up of developed technologies and performing, where applicable, life-cycle analysis and techno-economic assessments to create a full picture of the potential of the catalytic processes discovered and developed.

D-Carbonize network - kick off meeting