Bayer MaterialScience has announced plans to invest €15m into commercialising its technology platform ‘Dream Production’, for turning waste CO2 into useable polymer. “The first major field of application will most likely be mattress production,” said Dr. Karsten Malsch, Dream Production Project Manager at Bayer MaterialScience.
The platform promises to turn greenhouse gases into a basic building block for plastics.
The latest injection of cash will go towards the construction of a production line at the group’s Dormagen site, which will use CO2 to produce a precursor for premium polyurethane foam. The line will have an annual production capacity of 5,000 metric tonnes. The permit application will be submitted to the Cologne district authority in the next few weeks.
Bayer claims that the first CO2-based polyols should enter the market as early as 2016, and says that processors of polyols and polyurethanes have already expressed “considerable interest”.
High-quality polyols based on CO2 are not currently available on a commercial scale. The new polyols from Bayer MaterialScience are said to display the same level of quality as their ‘conventional’ counterparts.
In addition to putting waste CO2 to use as a chemical building block, the process also permits a reduction in the amount of the petroleum-based raw material propylene oxide, which polyols are normally made entirely from.
“Improving the sustainability of everything we do is an integral part of our business strategy and this principle is implemented in our Dream Production project. We have succeeded in turning a waste gas that is potentially harmful to the climate into a useful raw material. That helps the environment and mankind, and we all benefit,” said Bayer MaterialScience CEO Patrick Thomas.
Bayer MaterialScience developed the manufacturing process in collaboration with partners in industry and academia. The company discovered the catalyst that brings about the chemical reaction with the required level of efficiency, and developed it together with the CAT Catalytic Center, a research facility in Aachen, Germany. The process was tested extensively in a pilot plant at the Leverkusen site as part of the publicly funded Dream Production research project. This was accompanied by a study of market demand.
The new polyol is used for the production of polyurethane foam, which finds applications in upholstered furniture, shoes and automotive parts, and is also used to insulate buildings and refrigeration equipment.