Utilization of waste CO2 to make renewable chemicals and fuels

Utilization of waste carbon dioxide from industrial sources could provide an additional income stream for CO2 emitting industries and provide a distributed and domestic source of carbon- based compounds for use as chemicals and fuels. An efficient, cost-effective, and modular reactor for electrochemical reduction of CO2 (ECO2R) to carbon-neutral or -negative compounds is needed to make this a reality. Using only water and electricity as inputs, ECO2R has been demonstrated to produce over 16 different fuels and chemicals. Some could be used directly as cleaning agents, fuel, or polymer precursors. Other compounds produced though ECO2R can be used as feedstocks into biological processes to produce higher value materials. The proposed effort aims to show the commercial viability of the technology by enhancing the CO2 utilization of Opus 12’s single cell and multi-cell reactor design. Increasing CO2 utilization will increase the commercial viability of the process.Phase I will also support research to demonstrate the feasibility of increasing CO2 utilization to bring down costs. Phase II will support the first Opus 12 pilot unit, which will form the basis for commercialization.