The European polymer industry is under increasing pressure to produce innovative products at lower cost to compete with overseas imports. Econic Technologies has invented a catalyst that enables replacing up to 40% of petrochemical feedstock in the production of polyurethane polyols, an important polymer segment, with low cost waste CO2, resulting in high performance product. Econic Technologies is spun out of Imperial College London, where the technology was invented, now grown to a family of patent-protected catalysts whose unique characteristic is high reactive activity and selectivity for polymers under low pressures. The catalysts enable the maximum theoretical uptake of CO2 with far superior reaction rates than their competitors under industry relevant conditions. The Econic catalyst creates novel value-add polyol building blocks for polyurethanes whilst offering significant feedstock savings: CO2 costs $100/Tonne whereas PO costs $1900/tonne. When competitive technologies require expensive new plant facilities to meet stringent process conditions Econic’s catalyst can be deployed by a low cost retrofit. The technology is proven in the lab (TRL6) and client-site demonstration (TRL7) has commenced on small scale. The Phase I feasibility study has established that early adopting market leading polyol producers are keen to deploy the technology but they still need to persuade their downstream customers, the polyurethane producers. This will crucially be assisted by demonstrator applications which Phase II will now develop. Over the first five years after Phase II completion, Econic generates EUR180m catalyst sale revenues. Polyol producers will benefit by increased profit margins to the tune of EUR380m over the same period. Catalyst toll manufacturers will generate turnover of EUR30m+ and carbon capture plants will be able to sell EUR18m worth of CO2. Total expected qualified job creation from the project exceeds 100 over the first five commercial years.

Over 90% of bulk polymers with a production volume of greater than 150 million tonnes per annum are sourced from crude oil. Within the UK, the polymers industry directly employs 286,000 people and has annual sales of £18.1 billion which accounts for 2.1% of UK GDP. It produces around 2.5 million tonnes of polymer every year and is achieving an annual growth of 2.5%. The UK is in the top 5 polymer producers in the EU and its exports are worth £4.6 billion to the UK economy. These polymers are ubiquitous in everyday life and have many applications including: medical, transport, electrical, construction and packaging; the latter accounting for over a third of all polymers produced. This dependence on petrochemicals for polymer production has environmental and economic risks and will, ultimately, become unsustainable as supplies of crude oil become exhausted. Therefore, there are good reasons to develop new processes for polymer production using renewable resources and for the UK, such resources must not compete with food production. Carbon dioxide is a particularly promising renewable resource, especially the use of waste carbon dioxide from sources such as power stations, chemical plants, cement and metal works. The overall aim of this project is to develop the chemistry and engineering required to transform waste biomass and carbon dioxide into commodity polymers (2011 global production 280 million metric tonnes), specifically: polyalkanes, polyethers, polyesters, polycarbonates and polyurethanes. The key reaction pathway is from biomass to alkenes (polymerizable to polyalkanes) to epoxides which can be polymerized to polyethers or copolymerized to produce polyesters or polycarbonates. These can be further reacted to produce polyurethanes suitable for applications in furniture, insulation and adhesives. For this to be sustainable, the alkene and other reactants must also be sustainably sourced and we will investigate the use of terpenes, sugar derivatives and unsaturated acid derivatives obtained from agricultural and forestry waste. For example, during the 2011-2012 growing season, the EU processed 1.9 million metric tonnes of citrus producing approximately 950,000 metric tonnes of waste. After removal of water this left 190,000 metric tonnes of residue from which about 14,000 metric tonnes of limonene could be isolated for use as a polymer feedstock. In addition to carrying out the required chemical research, the engineering necessary to scale up the syntheses to pilot plant and production scale will be carried out. The chemical and mechanical processes associated with isolating materials from biomass and converting them into polymers will inevitably require energy and other chemicals, the production of which will generate carbon dioxide. Therefore, lifecycle analysis will be used to determine all of the carbon dioxide emissions associated with polymer production from both petrochemical and biomass sources. Comparison of the data will provide a quantitative understanding of how much better the sustainable route is than the petrochemical route and will illustrate which aspects of the synthesis are responsible for most of the carbon dioxide emissions. This, combined with energy usage and cost data will allow the project team to concentrate their efforts on minimising these emissions through for example the use of microwave heating rather than conventional heating and the use of alternative solvents such as supercritical carbon dioxide. In summary, polymers are ubiquitous in everyday life and the polymer industry is a major UK employer. Their scale of production and range of applications means that they are a high priority target to switch from fossil to sustainable sourcing. Successful completion of this project will protect UK jobs, protect the UK supply of these essential materials and provide income through license agreements with overseas manufacturers.

Polymers are all around us and although they are an integral part to the development of the global economy, many materials are only used once. Waste production in the UK is a significant issue with 80% of materials used in manufacturing products ending up as waste, landfill approaching capacity and a 40% increase in consumer waste projected between 2016 and 2020. Against a backdrop of sustainability and the need to reduce environmental impacts, recycling, re-use and remanufacture are becoming ever more important. This Fellowship will develop smart polymers that provide high performance and also enable recycling, which will be a unique approach in the UK to a circular economy. The goal of the programme is to work with academic and industrial partners to develop a key body of knowledge via high quality underpinning science and correlating the molecular architecture of the new materials with their basic physical properties and the application performance important to the end use, in addition to designing the relative compatibility between polymers to optimise their form and ultimate properties.

In the UK, the plastic industry alone employs >170,000 people and has an annual sale turnover of >£23.5 billion, it is also one of the top 10 UK exports. Worldwide polymer production volumes exceed 300 Mt/annum, with CAGR of 5-10%. Today almost all polymers are sourced from oi/gas and are neither chemically recycled nor biodegradable. Existing polymer manufacturing plants are optimized for a single product and because of the very high capital expenditure required to build plants their lifetimes must be as long as possible. One drawback of existing processes designed for a single product is that they hinder innovation and slow the introduction of step-change products. In this proposal a new manufacturing process allows monomer mixtures to be selectively polymerized to selectively deliver completely new types of sustainable materials. The process requires just one reactor which is re-configured to dial-up multiple combinations of desirable products with controllable structures and compositions. This fellowship allows time for detailed investigation and development of the manufacturing concept as well as new research into product applications in three high-tech, high-value sectors, namely as recyclable and biodegradable thermoplastic elastomers, shape-memory plastics for robotics and delivery agents for biomolecule therapies. The research is underpinned by the efficient use of renewable resources, such as carbon dioxide and bio-derived monomers, and the polymers are designed for efficient end-of-life recycling and biodegradation. By applying existing commodity monomers, such as propene oxide and maleic anhydride, industrialization and translation of the results is accelerated. The fellowship allows the PI to learn new skills and build collaborations which will be realized through regular sabbaticals and secondments. It also allows the close industrial collaboration and oversight to re-configure polymer manufacturing to produce sustainable, high value materials to meet existing and future industrial needs.

This project will develop new nanometre-sized catalysts and (electro-) chemical processes for producing fuels, including methanol, methane, gasoline and diesel, and chemical products from waste carbon dioxide. It builds upon a successful first phase in which a new, highly controlled nanoparticle catalyst was developed and used to produce methanol from carbon dioxide; the reaction is a pertinent example of the production of a liquid fuel and chemical feedstock. In addition, we developed high temperature electrochemical reactions and reactors for the production of 'synthesis gas' (carbon monoxide and hydrogen) and oxygen from carbon dioxide and water. In this second phase of the project, we shall extend the production of fuels to include methanol, methane, gasoline and diesel, by integrating suitably complementary processes, using energy from renewable sources or off-peak electricity. The latter option is particularly attractive as a means to manage electricity loads as more renewables are integrated with the national power grid. In parallel, we will apply our new nanocatalysts to enable the copolymerization of carbon dioxide with epoxides to produce polycarbonate polyols, components of home insulation foams (polyurethanes). The approach is both commercially and environmentally attractive due to the replacement of 30-50% of the usual petrochemical carbon source (the epoxide) with carbon dioxide, and may be commercialised in the relatively near term. These copolymers are valuable products in their own right and provide a commercial-scale proving ground for the technology, before addressing integration into the larger scale challenges of fuel production and energy management. The programme will continue to improve our catalyst performance and our understanding, to enable carbon dioxide transformations to a range of valuable products. The work will be coupled with a comprehensive process systems analysis in order to develop the most practical and valuable routes to implementation. Our goal is to continue to build on our existing promising results to advance the technology towards commercialisation; the research programme will focus on: 1) Catalyst optimization and scale-up so as to maximise the activities and selectivities for target products. 2) Development and optimization of the process conditions and engineering for the nanocatalysts, including testing and modelling new reactor designs. 3) Process integration and engineering to enable tandem catalyses and efficient generation of renewable fuels, including integration with renewable energy generation taking advantage of off-peak electrical power availability. 4) Detailed economic, energetic, environmental and life cycle analysis of the processes. We will work closely with industrial partners to ensure that the technologies are practical and that key potential impediments to application are addressed. We have a team of seven companies which form our industrial advisory board, representing stakeholders from across the value chain, including: E.On, National Grid, Linde, Johnson Matthey, Simon Carves, Econic Technologies, and Shell.