Australia-based global energy company Woodside Energy and LanzaTech NZ, a US-based carbon capture and transformation company, announced a strategic collaboration with the signing of a Strategic Framework Agreement. Under the agreement Woodside will, in collaboration with LanzaTech and subject to a positive final investment decision, design, construct, own, maintain and... Read more →
AUDI AG and the Austria-based green tech company Krajete GmbH are jointly developing new technologies for filtering emissions from ambient air. In addition to robust adsorber materials, these direct air capturing technologies (DAC) are based, above all, on innovative processes. They make far-reaching energy and cost reductions possible. The latest... Read more →
The global capacity for carbon capture in 2030 is set to increase sixfold from today’s level, to 279 million tons of CO2 captured per year, according to research company BloombergNEF’s (BNEF) newly released 2022 CCUS Market Outlook. Sharp growth in the market has led to a 44% increase in expected... Read more →
Schlumberger and RTI International partner to accelerate the industrialization of NAS carbon capture technology
18 October 2022
Schlumberger has entered into an agreement with RTI International, a nonprofit research institute, to accelerate the industrialization and scale-up of its proprietary non-aqueous solvent (NAS) technology, which enhances the efficiency of absorption-based carbon capture. The NAS technology will be applicable to capture CO2 across a broad variety of industrial emissions.... Read more →
LanzaTech and Brookfield form strategic partnership with an initial $500M commitment; possible $500M more at agreed milestones
04 October 2022
LanzaTech, a company that transforms waste carbon into materials such as sustainable fuels, fabrics, packaging, and other products, announced a funding partnership with Brookfield Renewable, and its institutional partners, to co-develop and build new commercial-scale production plants that will employ LanzaTech’s CCT technology, which transforms captured carbon into valuable raw... Read more →
DOE to award up to $30M for direct air and ocean capture of CO2; conversion to fuels and chemicals
01 October 2022
The US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM) announced up to $30 million in funding (DE-FOA-0002614) for research and development (R&D) projects to advance carbon dioxide removal (CDR) approaches that will reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide by capturing it directly from both the atmosphere and... Read more →
Electrofuels provider Infinium announced an agreement with Amazon to begin using Infinium Electrofuels in the retailer’s middle mile fleet as an ultra-low carbon alternative to traditional fossil fuels. The clean burning electrofuels will be produced for Amazon at one of the first electrofuels production facilities, located in Texas. Infinium Electrofuels,... Read more →
A research team led by Profs. CHEN Wei and WEI Wei from the Shanghai Advanced Research Institute (SARI) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences reported a novel method that enables efficient CO2 electroreduction to CO by virtue of low-coordination chloride ion adsorption on a silver hollow fiber (Ag HF) electrode.... Read more →
JFE Steel Corporation, Itochu Corporation and Emirates Steel Arkan, the largest steel company in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), will conduct joint detailed feasibility studies on the establishment of a supply chain of ferrous raw material for green ironmaking with low-carbon emission at the project site in Abu Dhabi. Emirates... Read more →
Sandia National Laboratories researchers recently delivered electricity produced by a new power-generating system to the Sandia-Kirtland Air Force Base electrical grid. The system uses heated supercritical carbon dioxide instead of steam to generate electricity and is based on a closed-loop Brayton cycle. The Brayton cycle is named after 19th century... Read more →
UK-based Expleo, a global engineering, technology and consultancy service provider, has developed a closed-loop fuel solution for global shipping that delivers a 92% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions (GHGe) in the model vessel. Expleo modeled its system-of-systems solution on the multi-tasking Bibby Wavemaster 1, a vessel used to service offshore... Read more →
Using an inexpensive polymer called melamine, researchers from UC Berkeley, Texas A&M and Stanford have created a cheap, easy and energy-efficient way to capture carbon dioxide from smokestacks. The process for synthesizing the melamine material, published in an open-access paper in the journal Science Advances, could potentially be scaled down... Read more →
Researchers in Europe led by a team from ETH Zurich have designed a fuel production system that uses water, CO2, and sunlight to produce aviation fuel. The team implemented the system at pilot-scale in the field to demonstrate the technical feasibility of the entire sun-to-liquid fuel process chain, from H2O... Read more →
Carbon transformation company Twelve, Alaska Air Group, and Microsoft have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to collaborate on advancing the market for sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) to include fuels derived from recaptured CO2 and renewable energy, and working toward the first commercial demonstration flight in the United States powered... Read more →
EU investing €1.8B in 17 large-scale clean tech projects
13 July 2022
The EU is investing more than €1.8 billion in 17 large-scale innovative clean-tech projects with a third round of awards under the Innovation Fund. Grants will be disbursed from the Innovation Fund to help bring technologies to the market in energy-intensive industries, hydrogen, renewable energy, carbon capture and storage infrastructure,... Read more →
UK to award £54M to 15 projects developing innovative carbon removal technology
10 July 2022
The UK government is awarding £54 million to 15 projects to develop technologies that remove carbon emissions from the atmosphere. The money will help projects further develop their greenhouse gas removal technologies, which include a machine that can pull carbon dioxide out of the air, a plant to convert household... Read more →
Researchers from the University of Michigan and McGill University in Canada report photochemical syngas synthesis using a core/shell Au@Cr2O3 dual cocatalyst in coordination with multistacked InGaN/GaN nanowires (NWs) with the sole inputs of CO2, water, and solar light. Their paper is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences... Read more →
Sundsvall Energi will partner with Liquid Wind to be the host and provide carbon dioxide for the second commercial-scale—100,000 t—electrofuel facility in Sweden. Biogenic carbon dioxide from the Sundsvall energy facility will be captured and combined with renewable hydrogen to generate green electrofuel, eMethanol. The fuel is intended for the... Read more →
VTT and Neste to build integrated Power-to-Liquids demo facility; CO2 capture, green hydrogen and e-fuels production
23 June 2022
Power-to-Liquids technologies are on their way to commercialization in scale. E-fuels offer a way to expand the carbon-neutral transport fuel pool beyond biomass-based renewable fuels to replace fossil fuels in existing internal combustion engines. The end product is a transportation fuel suited for aircraft, ships as well as heavy and... Read more →
United announces investment in, commercial agreement with Dimensional Energy; CO2-to-SAF
16 June 2022
United and United Airlines Ventures (UAV) announced an investment in and commercial agreement with Dimensional Energy. Dimensional Energy, which recently received a $3.1-million award from ARPA-E (earlier post), has developed a reactor and catalysts to convert CO2 and hydrogen from water into syngas for use in the Fischer-Tropsch process. Under... Read more →
LanzaTech, Danone develop method to convert carbon emissions directly into MEG, a key building block for PET
27 May 2022
A consortium, including LanzaTech and Danone, has developed a new route to monoethylene glycol, (MEG), which is a key building block for polyethylene terephthalate, (PET), resin, fibers and bottles. The technology converts carbon emissions from steel mills or gasified waste biomass directly into MEG. The carbon capture technology uses a... Read more →
A research team from Tokyo Tech has used an alumina-supported, iron-based compound to develop a catalyst that can efficiently convert CO2 into formic acid (HCOOH) with ~90% selectivity. An open-acess paper on the work is published in the journal Angewandte Chemie. An et al. A wide-spread soil mineral, alpha-iron-(III) oxyhydroxide,... Read more →
New polymer membrane efficiently removes carbon dioxide from mixed gases; high permeability and selectivity
03 May 2022
A team of researchers from North Carolina State University, SINTEF in Norway and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, has developed a polymer membrane technology that removes carbon dioxide from mixed gases with both high permeability and high selectivity. A paper on their work is published in the journal... Read more →
AirCapture, OCOchem and partners win $2.93M DOE grant for direct air capture of CO2 and conversion to formic acid
26 April 2022
Carbon dioxide capture company AirCapture and carbon dioxide conversion company OCOchem, along with other partners, have won a $2.93-million grant from the US Department of Energy to design and engineer an integrated carbon dioxide capture and conversion plant co-located at Nutrien’s Kennewick Fertilizer Operations plant in Kennewick, Wash. AirCapture develops... Read more →
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Infinium, an electrofuels company (earlier post). The agreement, which builds on MHI’s 2021 investment in Infinium (earlier post), will focus on exploring the deployment of Infinium’s proprietary electrofuels technology in the Japanese market. Infinium electrofuels are classified as ultra-low... Read more →
Estonian startup UP Catalyst secures €2.09M; sustainable carbon nanomaterials and graphite from CO2
21 April 2022
Estonian startup UP Catalyst, a company developing a method to produce sustainable carbon nanomaterials and graphite from CO2, has closed a successful pre-seed round of €500,000, in addition to €1.59 million in grant funding secured earlier this year. The pre-seed round was led by Sunly, a developer of wind and... Read more →
Mexico-based global construction materials company CEMEX is partnering with integrated chemicals and energy company Sasol ecoFT and renewable energy company ENERTRAG to combine CO2 with hydrogen to produce sustainable aviation fuel. This project is part of CEMEX’s Future in Action program to reduce its carbon footprint and contribute to a... Read more →
Landsvirkjun, The National Power Company of Iceland, and German investment company PCC SE have agreed to explore the possibility of capturing and utilizing carbon emissions from PCC’s silicon metal plant in northeast Iceland. Carbon emissions will be utilized to produce green methanol that can, for example, replace fossil fuel in... Read more →
United Airlines Ventures (UAV) and Oxy Low Carbon Ventures (OLCV) announced a collaboration with Houston-based biotech firm Cemvita Factory to commercialize the production of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) intended to be developed through a new process using carbon dioxide and synthetic microbes. UAV also announced an equity investment in Cemvita... Read more →
Surrey team developing direct-air-capture CO2 to methanol process
04 April 2022
Researchers at the University of Surrey (UK) are developing a process to capture carbon dioxide directly from the air and then use dynamic catalysis to create methanol—a valuable chemical that, made this way, could be carbon-negative. Its value could offset the cost of direct air capture. The carbon negative chemicals... Read more →
LanzaTech, a company that has developed gas fermentation technology to transform waste carbon into materials such as sustainable fuels, fabrics, packaging and other products that people use in their daily lives, will go public through a merger with AMCI Acquisition Corp. II (AMCI), a publicly-traded special purpose acquisition company (SPAC).... Read more →
Twelve and LanzaTech successfully convert CO2 to ethanol
04 March 2022
Carbon transformation company Twelve and biotechnology company LanzaTech have transformed CO2 emissions into ethanol as a part of an ongoing research and development partnership. Ethanol is typically produced using biological processes or as a petrochemical, through ethylene hydration, using fossil fuels. It’s also often produced using corn and other crop... Read more →
Electrofuels innovator Infinium (earlier post) has entered into a strategic alliance with US independent energy company Denbury to collaborate on developing ultra-low carbon electrofuels projects in the state of Texas. Infinium electrofuels facilities being developed in Brazoria County will convert renewable power into green hydrogen and combine it with industrial-sourced... Read more →
A team of scientists from LanzaTech, Northwestern University and the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have engineered a microbe to convert molecules of industrial waste gases, such as carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, into acetone and isopropanol (IPA). These widely used chemicals serve as the basis of thousands... Read more →
Researchers at Stanford University have shown that porous polymer encapsulation of metal-supported catalysts can drive the selectivity of CO2 conversion to hydrocarbons. Using this technique, they report orders of magnitude higher turnover frequencies for hydrocarbon formation compared to conventional catalysts. A paper on their work is published in Proceedings of... Read more →
DOE to award up to $19M to advance waste carbon utilization for algal biofuels and bioproducts
12 February 2022
The US Department of Energy’s Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) and the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management’s (FECM’s) Carbon Utilization Program (CUP) announced up to $19 million in federal funding for the advancement of technologies that utilize waste carbon... Read more →
Infinium partners with ENGIE for one of largest announced commercial-scale e-fuels plants in Europe; Reuze project
08 February 2022
Infinium, an electrofuels company, is partnering with ENGIE to develop a facility that will produce ultra-low carbon Infinium electrofuels at scale for the local transportation industry. The new Reuze project includes the development of one of Europe’s largest announced CO2 conversion hubs, located in France, which will enable the conversion... Read more →
Dry reforming of methane (DRM) is one promising approach to converting methane and carbon dioxide into chemical feedstock or syngas. However, DRM needs a stable and highly active catalyst for its commercialization. Metal-supported zeolites are widely used for this purpose, due to their microporous structure and chemical stability. In particular,... Read more →
Researchers at MIT have identified, quantified, and modeled a major reason for the poor performance of electroreduction processes to convert CO2 to fuel or other useful chemicals. The findings could spur progress on developing a variety of materials and designs for electrochemical carbon dioxide conversion systems. A paper on their... Read more →
Vertimass and European Energy to partner on CO2 to hydrocarbons via methanol pathway
13 January 2022
Vertimass and European Energy have completed a Letter of Intent (LOI) to integrate technologies for capturing carbon dioxide and converting it into hydrocarbon products around the world. This combination takes advantage of European Energy’s expertise in capturing carbon dioxide from waste sources (carbon dioxide produced from anaerobic digestion, power production,... Read more →
Johnson Matthey launches HyCOgen; converting CO2 and green hydrogen into sustainable aviation fuel
06 January 2022
Johnson Matthey has launched HyCOgen, a technologyt designed to play a pivotal role in enabling the conversion of captured carbon dioxide (CO2) and green hydrogen into sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). By combining HyCOgen with the award-winning FT CANS Fischer Tropsch technology (developed in collaboration with bp), Johnson Matthey offers an... Read more →
Researchers develop new stable artificial photosynthesis device to produce ethylene and hydrogen from sunlight and CO2
25 December 2021
A research team has developed a new artificial photosynthesis device component with remarkable stability and longevity as it selectively converts sunlight and carbon dioxide into two promising sources of renewable fuels: ethylene and hydrogen. The researchers’ findings, which they recently reported in the journal Nature Energy, reveal how the device... Read more →
Klimatklivet awards Liquid Wind €15M toward production of eMethanol
27 November 2021
Swedish Climate Leap, “Klimatklivet”, is investing €15 million in power-to-fuel Liquid Wind’s facility, FlagshipONE, producing eMethanol. (Earlier post.) The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency works on behalf of the Swedish government, conducting and coordinating Sweden's environmental work within Sweden, the EU and internationally. The aim of their initiative Climate Leap is... Read more →
A promising route for turning CO2 emissions into a fuel feedstock is the process of electrochemical reduction (e.g., earlier post). However, to be commercially viable, the process needs to be improved to yield a higher amount of desirable carbon-rich products. Now, as reported in the journal Nature Energy, researchers at... Read more →
The electrocatalytic conversion of CO2 using renewable energy could establish a climate-neutral, artificial carbon cycle. Excess energy produced by photovoltaics and wind energy could be stored through the electrocatalytic production of fuels from CO2. These could then be burned as needed. Conversion into liquid fuels would be advantageous because they... Read more →
WUSTL researchers demonstrate solar-panel-powered microbial electrosynthesis to produce n-butanol from light, CO2 and power
08 November 2021
Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have discovered a new way to train microbes to make n-butanol. A team of biologists and engineers modified Rhodopseudomonas palustris TIE-1 (TIE-1) so that it can produce a biofuel using only three renewable and naturally abundant source ingredients: carbon dioxide, solar panel-generated electricity... Read more →
MEYER NEPTUN Engineering to cooperate with Leibniz Institute on power-to-liquid climate-neutral fuels
31 October 2021
MEYER NEPTUN Engineering, a new startup within the Meyer Group focused on green innovations in the maritime industry, plans to work with the Leibniz Institute for Catalysis (LIKAT Rostock) on the establishment and operation of a development platform for power-to-liquid fuels from renewable energy and CO2. Power-to-Liquid (PtL) is based... Read more →
CRI ETL project in China will recycle 150,000 tons of CO2/year to make 100,000 tons of methanol
26 October 2021
Chinese petrochemicals corporation Jiangsu Sailboat Petrochemicals Co. ltd has signed an agreement with Icelandic technology company Carbon Recycling International (CRI) to design a chemical plant based on CRI’s Emissions to Liquids (ETL) technology. (Earlier post.) The plant will recycle approximately 150,000 metric tons of CO2 and 20,000 metric tons of... Read more →
Carbon Recycling International (CRI) and Johnson Matthey (JM) have agreed on a long-term exclusive catalyst supply agreement for the use of JM’s KATALCO methanol catalysts in CRI’s Emissions-To-Liquids (ETL) CO2-to-methanol plants. This combined offering helps meet the urgent need to remove carbon emissions in hard-to-decarbonize sectors of the economy. Conventional... Read more →
Twelve produces first batch of E-Jet fuel from CO2 electrolysis; partnership with USAF; electrifying fuel, not planes
19 October 2021
Carbon transformation company Twelve (formerly Opus 12, earlier post) has produced the first fossil-free jet fuel—called E-Jet—from CO2 electrolysis, demonstrating a scalable, energy-efficient path to the de-fossilization of global aviation. This project was supported through funding from the US Air Force (USAF), and produced fuel globally applicable for both commercial... Read more →