DOE Funding Advances Southern Research Project To Turn Captured CO2 Into Key Chemicals

By Jerry Underwood – Southern Research

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has selected Southern Research for an award of up to $1.5 million to advance technology for carbon dioxide (CO2) utilization.

The DOE award, now being negotiated, will fund scale-up and field testing of a catalytic process for conversion of CO2 and shale-derived ethane to ethylene, a valuable olefin.

Olefins serve as building blocks for a sweeping variety of products such as packaging, plastics, textiles, paints, and electronics. Industrial demand for olefins such as ethylene and propylene is rising at 4 to 5 percent annually as living standards improve across the world.

Over the last two years on a previously funded DOE study, Southern Research has developed a novel nano-engineered catalyst-driven process for the production of light olefins, such as ethylene, using CO2 from coal-fired flue gas and lower alkanes derived from shale gas feedstock.

This lab scale study demonstrated the conversion, selectivity, and stability of this new generation catalyst in presence of flue gas impurities and low concentrations of CO2.

The results of the lab-scale study led to this new award, which consists of constructing and operating a field scale unit. This project will produce and test a larger amount of catalyst and validate both the process reliability and the ability to produce ethylene at the next engineering scale.

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