Flue2Chem

A multi-sector project aims to transform industrial flue gases into chemicals for more sustainable household cleaning products

Many of the everyday products we use – from cleaning products to mobile phones – are made with chemicals derived from coal, oil and gas.

Just under 6% of all the fossil carbon extracted globally goes into these products, so if the UK is to meet its net zero targets, the chemicals industry must find an alternative, more sustainable source of carbon for the wide range of goods that require it as a raw material for production.

To address this challenge, industry giants in the UK have joined forces to replace fossil-fuel feedstocks with carbon from industrial gases. Pooling expertise from academia, the foundation industries and the consumer goods sector, the Flue2Chem project explored how CO₂ from the flues of paper plants could be captured and converted into chemicals that form a key ingredient in consumer products, such as washing detergents.

The ground-breaking research not only paves the way for reducing industrial greenhouse gas emissions but also boosts the resilience of the UK chemicals sector. “The UK chemicals sector is one of the UK’s largest industrial carbon emitters, contributing 14% of UK industrial greenhouse gas in 2021. Currently, large amounts of the carbon-containing feedstocks used are imported,” says Dr David Bott, Head of Innovation at the Society of Chemical Industry, spearheading the programme alongside consumer goods company Unilever. “Flue2Chem brought together partners from across the whole supply chain to demonstrate how we can mitigate the waste emissions of foundation industries and create a supply chain for a more sustainable, domestically sourced feedstock for the chemical sector.”

Exploring carbon capture and utilisation

With £2.7m from the Transforming Foundation Industries (TFI) challenge, the project addressed the technical aspects of capturing and converting flue gas CO₂, as well as developing business models that inform the economic incentives likely required from the government.

The alternative sources of carbon currently available for feedstocks – including biomass and deep chemical recycling – are limited in their capacity to meet the billions of tonnes required by the chemicals industry each year, so Flue2Chem investigated the potential of carbon capture and utilisation (CCU). “CCU is the least well-understood of these alternative processes, so this programme was designed to fill in some of those gaps. We wanted to understand the mechanics of capturing carbon, if and how it could be turned into something useful for manufacturers, and what the economic, environmental, and social impact of those processes would be,” explains Dr Bott.

Turning industrial flue gases into useful chemicals

The project focused on developing alkoxylated surfactants – a simple feedstock widely used in household cleaning products.

Paper companies UPM-Kymmene and Holmen Iggesund Paperboard, alongside Tata Steel (before the closure of its blast furnaces in Port Talbot), delivered waste CO₂ from their processing plants. The University of Sheffield developed new technology to remove carbon from the CO₂ using pressure swing and a novel adsorbent. This technology progressed from lab scale to 1-tonne/day through work with CCU International.

Different arms of the projects investigated methods for turning captured CO₂ into the chemicals required for the surfactant – dodecanol and ethylene oxide. Chemicals manufacturer Johnson Matthey worked with the University of Sheffield and BASF with Imperial College London to explore routes for both chemicals, while the Centre for Process Innovation focussed on making dodecanol using biological routes. The resulting chemicals were sent to industry ingredients manufacturer Croda to produce a surfactant. The final stage of the programme will see global consumer goods companies Unilever, Reckitt, and Procter & Gamble use the surfactant in formulations for cleaning products, while the University of Surrey will develop Life Cycle Assessments of existing and proposed processes to guide the development of this new industrial value chain.

Supporting the UK chemical sector’s low-carbon transition

Flue2Chem has successfully demonstrated the feasibility of using captured carbon to make a surfactant for consumer production. “The project has scaled up a new carbon capture process and developed new catalysts to convert CO₂ to the chemicals we need. We have shown that it is technologically possible to turn captured CO₂ into the components of a simple surfactant and that a cleaning product made from this performs exactly the same as a product from virgin fossil carbon,” says Dr Bott. “Crucially, if this is to compete with fossil-fuel based materials, we’ve shown that large-scale production is technically and economically possible.”

Beyond the project, the partners intend to build on learnings to explore the manufacture of more complex surfactants, as well as higher value chemicals for the flavours, fragrances and pharmaceuticals industry.

Importantly, the creation of a white paper aims to highlight the need for regulatory and fiscal support from the government. “The paper will make recommendations about how to develop standards and regulations that support the move from fossil carbon feedstocks to circular supply chains. We’ve shown we have the technology, but these products cannot compete on price unless there is a tax on using fossil carbon,” explains Dr Bott.

“This is a period of existential change for the UK chemicals sector. If we don’t embrace and support it, then we will lose the ability to make chemicals in this country, which will also put our entire manufacturing industry at risk. No single company can do this alone; it requires regulation, investment and more collaborations like Flue2Chem.”