Avantium lands US$2.1M EU funding for carbon-captured polymer Volta Technology

27 May 2021 --- Dutch biopolymer pioneer Avantium has been awarded €1.78 million (US$2.17 million) in EU grants to develop its Volta Technology for producing CO2-based polymers. 

This platform technology uses electrochemistry to convert CO2 into high-value products and chemical building blocks, which can then be used in polyesters and cosmetics. 

The EU Horizon 2020 program awarded the funding to Avantium for its participation in the CATCO2VERS 1, CO2SMOS2 and VIVALDI3 consortia. The EU will pay out the funding in four tranches over a period of four years. 

The three consortium programs aim to reduce industry-produced GHG by developing innovative and integrated technologies based on electrochemical, enzymatic and thermochemical processes. 

Speaking to PackagingInsights, Erica Ording, Volta Technology team leader, explains how the technology works. 

“Volta uses CO2 as a feedstock to make high value chemicals and syngas, an ‘intermediate’ normally derived from burning coal which makes synthetic natural gas, ammonia, and methanol.”

“It is designed for integration into Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage (CCUS) systems – an industry investigating how the carbon emissions from one process can be used to incite a different process to produce a different product stream.”

“Volta can be fed via Direct Air Capture, which can take very low concentrations of CO2 out of the air, or use the emissions from large industrial installations, to produce the chemicals.” 

Avantium is conducting the research in collaboration with the Industrial Sustainable Chemistry research team at the University of Amsterdam.

Bringing captured carbon to market 
Ording says Volta sources emissions from biobased, CO2-based, or recycled monomers, which is the carbon that is already “above ground.” Using these sources of monomers avoids the emissions associated with fossil fuel materials. 

“Upon domestic waste incineration, each kilogram of fossil plastic is converted to 2.5 kg of CO2 on average. For fossil polymers, this is an extra CO2 added to the atmosphere, so creating CO2-based polymers reduces emissions by 2.5 kg.” 

“Additionally, we design to ensure improved physical properties, which makes these polymers more suited for reuse or biodegradation. We like to find materials that are durable for their intended use and make them so they can be reused and later recycled, either mechanically or chemically.”Avantium are aiming to bring carbon captured materials to market within five to ten years.

Development and commercialization of the technology will take time, Ording says, particularly to become cost competitive with traditional plastics. 

“The polymer market has been consolidated for decades, so we need to demonstrate we can develop materials of superior quality and design toward reuse and degradability.” 

“We have been working on the polymer families relevant to this recent news for three to five years, which means we still have a number of development stages to go through. When introducing new materials to the market, it will always take time for them to be competitive in price compared with market incumbents.”

Fossil fuel-based plastic replacements
The funding announcement comes as Avantium makes strides toward technologies capable of replacing fossil fuel-based polymers as stricter plastics regulations come into force. 

In April, the company signed an agreement with Resilux, an international rigid plastic packaging supplier, for the supply of PEF (polyethylene furanoate) bio-resin from the planned Avantium FDCA flagship plant. 

Avantium CEO Tom van Aken recently sat down with PackagingInsights to discuss how PEF could come to replace PET in packaging applications, claiming that as a “100 percent recyclable, plant-based and high-performance polymer, it is the plastic material of the future.”

“It helps meet the growing demand for circular and renewable products that tackle major environmental issues, such as climate change and plastic accumulation,” he explains. 

Carbon capturing 
Capturing and converting carbon emissions into usable resources is a growing technology, with key industry players working on projects to reduce GHG and fossil fuel reliance. 

Last year, L’Oréal partnered with energy giant Total and carbon recycling company LanzaTech to create cosmetics plastic packaging from carbon emissions, which it plans to fully commercialize by 2025.

Unilever’s Home Care division also partnered with LanzaTech, along with India Glycols, to produce a surfactant for its cleaning products made from captured and recycled carbon industrial emissions.

The surfactant, made from carbon emissions captured in China, will be used in OMO laundry capsules under the Persil brand, “the first of their kind in the Chinese market,” says Unilever.

By Louis Gore-Langton