Carbon Dioxide Utilisation: A Catalyst for European Industrial Renaissance?

Essen will be the “place to be” at the end of September for those working on CO2 recycling and #useCO2 projects in Europe. The city will be the venue for the Fourth Conference on Carbon Dioxide as Feedstock for Fuels, Chemistry and Polymers on 29 and 30 September organised by the Nova Institute. And before the conference the SCOT (Smart CO2 Transformation) FP7 project will hold its mid-term conference on Carbon Dioxide Utilisation (CDU) on 28 September. All the events take place at the same location: Haus der Technik in Essen, Germany.

On 28 September the SCOT team will present its Vision for Carbon Dioxide Utilisation and a Strategic European Research Agenda for Europe. The floor will then be open for the views of high level speakers from politics and industry. Plenty of discussion is expected and you are welcome to take part!

SCOT wants to hear the voices of a wide range of participants. Break-out sessions in smaller groups will also provide opportunities for intense knowledge exchange and discussions on the various aspects of #useCO2 policy and technical issues.

Interactive sessions
This one-day conference will be THE place to hear about the latest developments on Carbon Dioxide Utilisation and help shape the future of CDU/ #useCO2 in Europe. Input from the conference will directly feed into SCOT advisory reports to the European Commission. These reports will cover both the future role of CDU in Europe and future support mechanisms for CDU.

The SCOT conference aims to actively engage academics, politicians and industry to discuss the Vision and business opportunities of CDU up to 2030. The break-out sessions will be in small groups of (20-25 people) and will involve a single presentation and a moderator to guide the discussion. The outcomes can help the SCOT team to further narrow down the project’s Vision, Research Objectives and Action Plan.

The sessions are on:

• The Potential of Carbon Dioxide Utilization for Mineralization and Waste
• Availability of low-cost low-carbon electricity for CDU
• Making chemical building blocks using CO2
• Working towards better LCA for CDU and System boundary definitions of CDU
• Power to X: Synthetic fuels from CO2? 
• Framing Carbon Dioxide Utilisation
• Bridging the Gap: (Policy) options to get from lab to market

The SCOT project team are certain that there are already many ideas for CDU that only require a good platform and funding to make them happen. At the end of the conference, SCOT is organising a matchmaking event to allow people to find projects and partners to respond successfully to the European research calls of 2016 on Carbon Dioxide Utilisation. Information will be available on next year’s Horizon 2020 calls including those under the SPIRE PPP initiative and the forthcoming Horizon Prize on CO2 utilisation. Come along to pitch your project ideas and expertise!

Participation in the SCOT conference (including the matchmaking event) costs €50 and you can register here. Students have the opportunity of getting a free ticket on a first-come-first-serve basis.
For more information, please contact the project secretariat. You can download the programme here.

CO2 as Feedstock
The SCOT conference takes place back to back with the Fourth Conference on Carbon Dioxide as Feedstock that is hosted by the Nova-Institute on 29 and 30 September at the Haus der Technik in Essen.

Over the last few years, the rise of this topic has developed rapidly from several research projects and industrial applications to become more and more dynamic, especially in the fields of solar fuels (power-to-fuel, power-to-gas) and also in CO2-based chemicals and polymers. At this conference leading players will showcase some enhanced and also new applications using carbon dioxide as feedstock. Representatives from political bodies and research institutes will be on hand at the event to present and discuss the latest national and regional policies, strategies and visions.

You can access the full programme for the event here and registration is here.

Carbon Dioxide for Chemistry and Polymers

For the second consecutive year, experts will gather in Germany to discuss the subject of carbon dioxide (CO₂) as the feedstock of the future. The event, organized by Nova-Institute, will take place on 7-9 October 2013 at Haus der Technik in Essen and will be the biggest event on CO2 as chemical feedstock this year bringing new insights into the utilisation of carbon dioxide: an area of great interest to SusChem.

Life on Earth has thrived successfully for more than three billion years relying only on CO₂ as a single feedstock in combination with water and solar energy. Recently a vision of a ‘CO₂ economy’ has emerged based on different technologies developed to capture CO₂ and convert it into the wide range of chemicals that are vital to modern society. CO₂ utilisation could enable recycling of CO₂ as an everlasting raw material and the main carbon source for a truly circular economy. These new and exciting chemical technologies are described by the generic acronym CCU: Carbon Capture and Utilisation.

The first steps to achieving this CO₂ vision are already in hand and many interesting technologies are under development with the first investments in energy storage (power-to-gas) and polymers (polyurethanefrom CO2) made this year in Europe.

CO₂ can provide a feedstock for many different chemical routes. These include renewable energy storage via CO₂ upgrade, chemicals and polymers from CO₂, CO₂ mineralization, CO₂ as carbon source for biotechnology applications (for example algae and bacteria) and artificial photosynthesis via chemical processes – perhaps the ultimate goal. The source of CO₂ as feedstock could be from industrial flue gases or directly from the atmosphere.

Carbon insights

The Essen conference will present a range of these new technologies. On the first day, the vision and framework for a modern CO₂ economy will be outlined by representatives from European and German political bodies, the International Energy Agency (IEA) and Gernot Klotz from Cefic will describe how Cefic and SusChem are organising to boost research and innovation in this area.

In addition the Virgin Earth Challenge will present their vision for CO₂ utilisation’s role in combating climate change. And finally some projects from Europe and Japan will give insights into their work on artificial photosynthesis and sustainability aspects of CO₂ utilisation.

The second day will focus on feedstock preparation and utilization in innovative inorganic and organic chemistry and also on the production on 'solar fuels'. Following some overviews, several international speakers from the industry and academia will present their most recent project results.

On the final day, the conference will focus on polymers and building blocks made from CO₂ via chemical and biotechnological routes. Highlights of that day will be presentations of companies such as Bayer and BASF and research organisations including the BioBase Europe Pilot Plant in Belgium.

A technical exhibition and poster session will run in parallel to the conference.

More information

You can find more details about the exhibition and the poster session and register online for the conference at its website or contact the organiser Dominik Voght at Nova Institute. 

SusChem closely follows progress in CO₂ utilisation and regularly tweets on developments using the #useCO2 hashtag.