OCEAN is a four-year and 10 months project, organized in three consecutive phases.
The first phase (first 2 years) of the project was dedicated to the development of new electrochemical technologies (electrically driven reactions to produce the require chemicals) as well as upscaling and optimization of the electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide in an industrial context.
The second phase (third year) was devoted to the optimization, engineering, and manufacturing of the large-scale units.
The further period was dedicated to testing and demonstration/validation of the industrial feasible units, these tests were conducted in environmentally relevant conditions (TRL 6). That is, on-site in a power plant utilizing captured CO2 form the facility.
During the first period (first 18th months) seven of the WPs were active, except WP6 (LCA). A few tasks ended in the 1st period, but most of the tasks and all WPs were active in the 2nd reporting period. The activities were in good agreement with those planned, but with some delays related to general pandemic situation that limited most of the activities and caused delays. Except for some shift due to these aspects, no key issues were identified in the deliverables and milestones. These were achieved according to expectations with minor changes subjected to two amendments.
The duration of the actions of the OCEAN project were extended to 58 months.
The outcome of OCEAN provided a value proposition of glyoxylic acid with the many important insights. With these insights a business case can be expanded to other markets as time progresses, utilizing the same techniques applied to the OCEAN business case and market analysis. From electrode development, the focus on the sales of standard products implementing the versions made in OCEAN will be a standard. Also, the continuation of manufacturing of custom-tailored gas diffusion electrodes for various CO2 reduction applications is on-going. With the insights from OCEAN, identification of a better produced and cheaper gas diffusion electrodes to deliver to the market will be a future objective. The design of the stack and the design of the processing unit will be used in future R&D projects to further upscale electrochemical technology to market level and commercialisation. The stack design can also be used to investigate other processes for the CO2 electroreduction beyond the OCEAN project (i.e. CO2 reduction to C+ products).
The further exploitation of the CO2 conversion scaled in OCEAN is a key step in the market acceptance of electrochemical conversion of CO2 to chemicals.
As business cases change over time and positive reaction from experts in the field increase, another course, away from Glyoxylic acid as a main product, has been linked. Formic acid and CO2 to PLGA have been identified as the next value proposition. More customer traction has been made in the market of formic acid and plastics from polymers in business development as of today.
The new course of Avantium has been designed in such a way to build partnerships on the full OCEAN process of CO2 to plastics, i.e. PLGA as a final product. Glyoxylic acid is still a product that is presented to the public as a business proposition when Avantium is advertising in the market. There is some interest from the market, but it is slow moving as most of the glyoxylic acid is in cosmetics and food additives and health and safety of newly introduced products in this market is a key factor in acceptance but has a long lead time.
