You know, as we've documented in a number of previous reports, such as, for just several examples:
West Virginia Coal Association | Bayer Corporation Promotes Carbon Dioxide Recycling | Research & Development; concerning and article published in The Bayer Scientific Magazine: "'Three atoms for a clean future'; CO2 destined to become a valuable raw material for innovative substances. Oil is becoming increasingly scarce, and carbon dioxide an ever greater problem for the world’s climate. For this reason, chemists are constantly on the lookout for new ways to replace fossil raw materials and make good use of the greenhouse gas. Together with a group of partners, Bayer researchers are making good progress in this direction, and have found a way to incorporate CO2 into the molecular structure of polyurethanes, thus saving oil"; and:
West Virginia Coal Association | Bayer Is Converting Coal Power Plant CO2 Into Plastics | Research & Development; concerning: "'Bayer Material Science CO2-to-Plastics Pilot Plant, Germany'; In February 2011, Bayer MaterialScience started a new pilot plant (in the) North Rhine-Westphalia state of Germany for producing plastics from carbon dioxide (CO2). It will be used to develop polyurethanes from the waste gas released during power generation"; and:
West Virginia Coal Association | Bayer Reveals "Hidden Value" of Coal: Carbon Dioxide | Research & Development; concerniing: "'CO2 as New Carbon Source for Chemical Industry'; March 27, 2012; Hidden Value - If one thinks about coal-fired power plants, what is it that comes first into one's mind? The picture of high-value starting materials or rather the picture of low value carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions? Most people will probably end up with the latter one. However, the utilization of CO2 as a valuable raw material is not as devious as one would expect: Advanced research shows that it could be used as new source of carbon - thus replacing at least partially crude oil from which the element is normally extracted";
good old Bayer Corporation - - may the deity of your choosing shine His or Her light upon that substantial and beneficent corporate citizen of US Coal Country - - has done just about everything but pay NASA to put a giant neon sign on the Moon flashing out the truth of the matter, which is:
Carbon Dioxide, as it arises in only a small way, relative to natural sources of emission, such as the earth's inexorable and un-taxable processes of planetary volcanism, from our essential use of Coal in the generation of abundant and truly affordable electric power, is a valuable, maybe even a precious, raw material resource.
CO2 can be recovered from the source of our choosing, perhaps, as Bayer is now doing, as seen in the above-cited article,"Bayer Material Science CO2-to-Plastics Pilot Plant, Germany", from a Coal-fired power generation plant, and then, on a practical basis, be productively utilized as a raw material and chemically consumed in the manufacture of high-performance, high-volume plastics.
In such applications, as Bayer specifies, Carbon Dioxide serves as a substitute for, and replaces "crude oil", the traditional major source of plastics manufacturing raw materials.
Should you take the time to read our above-cited reports concerning Bayer's CO2-recycling achievements, and our others concerning Bayer's various Carbon utilization technologies as they appear on the West Virginia Coal Association's web site, you will learn that Bayer has referred to their CO2-utilization chemistries as "Dream Reactions", and, to their manufacture of polyurethane, and perhaps other plastics, from Carbon Dioxide as "Dream Production".
And, herein, as excerpted from the initial link in this dispatch, Bayer Corporation themselves report that:
"A Dream Comes True
Technology Solutions, 2010
Crude oil is the raw material used to produce most plastics. What if one could conserve this limited resource and use carbon dioxide instead, which is available in abundance? For decades, chemists have considered this alternative a “dream reaction”, but now it is close to reality.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is considered the biggest polluter of all. However, if we are to believe the experts, this greenhouse gas will assume the role of a penitent in the near future and as a valuable raw material will ensure sustainable business development.
(One note of advisement: Keep in mind that Bayer is, though genuinely worldwide in scope and presence, at its core a German company. This document was almost certainly first written in German and then translated into, at least, English. And, despite their down-to-business reputation for efficiency and industry, the Germans, deep in their hearts, are a poetic and romantic bunch of folks. They can keep that pretty well hidden, but the fact comes out when they write stuff like this about their achievements, and provide us with narratives about what's going on. They can danged-near bring a tear to your eye with the sort of language and phrasing they employ.)
CO2 is to be integrated into the molecular structure of plastics and thus reduce the use of crude oil in the production of these indispensable engineering materials.
With this development, specialists could pave the way for a meaningful use of this pollutant. And let us not forget that if less crude oil is consumed in production processes, the dependence of the chemical industry on this fossil raw material is also lowered. It is clearly a win-win strategy, also considering the fact that reserves of fossil raw materials are rapidly diminishing.
For this reason, scientists have long been searching throughout the world for alternatives that could replace crude oil altogether or only individual building blocks of the long molecular chains. But for decades this idea has only remained a theory because, in technical terms, the conversion of a chemical compound into a raw material for plastic synthesis is an enormous challenge. In the past numerous experts have all failed in their attempts to accomplish this conversion.
In contrast, researchers at Bayer Technology Services and Bayer MaterialScience have succeeded in taking a crucial step forward that could eventually make this dream become reality. One of these experts is Dr. Aurel Wolf, a chemist who is researching in the Reaction Engineering & Catalysis global competence center at Bayer Technology Services.'The basic problem is that carbon dioxide molecules are very stable and thus slow to react,' says Wolf and then adds a simple explanation of this complicated scientific fact: 'The carbon atom and the two oxygen atoms are tightly bonded to form CO2. That makes it very difficult to integrate the inert trio into plastic
molecules.'
(Keep the good Doctor Aurel Wolf's name in mind. In at least one future report, we'll be documenting and describing some more of Bayer's specific Carbon Dioxide utilization technologies, and Dr. Wolf figures prominently as the lead named innovator of at least a few of them.)
What helps is activation energy, which allows chemical reactions with different partners. However, if the expenditure of energy is too big, the whole process becomes uneconomical. This has long been the case with carbon dioxide.
As a consequence, chemists have always referred to a “dream reaction”, when it was a matter of processing the small molecule into syntheses. This reaction has now been successfully achieved with the help of catalyst research. Catalysts can reduce the activation energy - and, as a result, make chemical processes more efficient. They can even make reactions feasible that would never possibly occur of their own accord. The use of CO2 leads to a process under pressure, which is vastly different from conventional plastic production processes.
(Remember that "Catalysts", elements or compounds that promote certain chemical reactions without actually becoming themselves entrained in those reactions, are at the core of nearly all the CO2 utilization and Coal conversion technologies and processes we've reported to you. For instance, as in our report of:
West Virginia Coal Association | CO2 Solution Wins Nobel Prize - in 1912 | Research & Development; concerning the Nobel lecture made by Paul Sabatier, subsequent to the award of the 1912 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to him, wherein he said: "During the period 1901 to 1905, together with Senderens, I showed that nickel is very suitable for the direct hydrogenation of nitriles into amines and, no less important, of aldehydes and acetones into corresponding alcohols. Carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide are both changed immediately into methane, which can therefore be synthesized with the greatest ease";
it was known all the way back in the first decade of the last century that "nickel" was an effective catalyst for the hydrogenation of Carbon Dioxide.)
The experts at Bayer Technology Services know all about catalysts and reactions under pressure. They already began with the first experiments in 2005. Over the years, the collaboration with colleagues from Bayer MaterialScience was steadily intensified, as the Bayer Business Area is a potential customer for carbon dioxide.
The chemical compound can be incorporated into polyols. The result are poly-ether polycarbonate polyols (PPP), which can serve as raw materials for the production of polyurethanes. These plastics are nearly universally applicable. They insulate buildings and refrigerators, ensure top-quality seating comfort and make cars lighter. In their search for a catalyst, the team did not have to start from zero. In 1969 Japanese researchers already showed that one can in principle activate CO2 with a catalyst.
'However, the speed of the reaction was extremely poor,' says Wolf. The advances in the following decades were rather modest.
(Actually, as seen for one example in our report of:
West Virginia Coal Association | US Air Force 1965 CO2 to Fuel Conversion | Research & Development; concerning: "Catalytic Reduction of Carbon Dioxide to Methane and Water; This report summarizes the work accomplished under contract AF 3"(615)-1210, for research on catalytic reduction of carbon dioxide to methane and water. The effort was initiated on 6 January 1964 and completed 31 December 1964 ... The work was monitored by ... Air Force Flight Dynamics Laboratory, Research and Technology Division, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. (The) optimum catalyst was determined to be ruthenium metal powder ... . The minimum temperature required with this catalyst to provide over 99% conversion of CO2 was 357 F, at one atmosphere ... .The overall objective of this project was to develop a catalyst that would efficiently promote the Sabatier process, i.e., reduction of carbon dioxide with hydrogen at low temperature to form water and methane in high yields";
our US Air Force, and it's contractors, had demonstrated a few years before the Japanese achievements cited by Bayer herein, in confirmation of Sabatier's much earlier work, that it was, indeed, quite feasible to "activate CO2 with a catalyst"; and, as in "99% conversion of CO2", to do so very effectively.)
This changed radically in 2008, when the Bayer researchers succeeded in achieving the first important step on the way to the right process. 2009 then marked the beginning of a project supported by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) and called “Dream Reactions”. The focuses of this project were the search for an improved catalyst and a better understanding of its principle mode of action. In addition to various other university partners, the CAT Catalytic Center of the RWTH Aachen University participated in the project, which Bayer Technology Services and Bayer MaterialScience managed together with the RWTH Aachen. Just under a year later the project partners are already able to announce some first successes. This outcome is not only a small sensation for the participants, but also for professional circles.
'In the meantime we have found catalysts that appear very promising,' says Wolf. The key to the success is the good teamwork with the colleagues from Bayer MaterialScience, 'without this we never would have progressed so far so quickly'. He says this without the emotion usually attached to a sense of accomplishment. It was almost as if a fruit farmer remarks that the harvest was good: satisfied, but not at all euphoric. Listening to Wolf, one would be more likely to gain the impression that it was mostly a matter of painstaking detective work. It was indeed very difficult to educe from him that it was equally as much a question of resourcefulness and also of drafting the next, still better catalyst with the help of profound
expertise in chemistry.
In the meantime Wolf and his team have tested some 200 different catalysts. For this work they have specially installed a reaction apparatus in their laboratory. Over and over again they brought together CO2 and propylene oxide in this apparatus - each time with a different catalyst - and then heated the mixture.
After a certain reaction time, they checked not only how much PPP was present, but also determined how much CO2 was really incorporated in the polymer molecule at the end of the reaction. A maximum of 43 percent by weight is theoretically possible. At the beginning of the experiments the researchers were still far off from this goal and only managed to obtain a few percent; in the meantime, we have markedly cleared double-digits, says Wolf. This good result heralded the start of the next step: the transition from the laboratory scale to technical scale production in a pilot plant. In May 2010 construction of this pilot plant began in the ChemPark Leverkusen, in which sample amounts of PPP were to be produced for project-internal testing.
Not only Bayer Technology Services, Bayer Material Science and the CAT worked in close cooperation on this subsequent project, christened “Dream Production”; a further partner joined the team:
RWE Power. The biggest producer of electricity in Germany will provide the carbon dioxide for the planned “Dream Production”.
It will be supplied from the lignite-fired power plant in Niederaussem. Here, the energy provider obtains gas in its Coal Innovation Center from flue gas in the first CO2 scrubbing plant in Germany.
And so the project now covers the entire value-added chain - from the raw material source (the flue gas cleaning) to the final product (polymers).
As with the original 'Dream Reaction' project, 'Dream Production' will also be supported by the BMBF (that is, the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research). Over a three-year period, the German Ministry will invest more than 4.5 million (Euro's) in the project. With this new milestone, the role of Bayer Technology Services will also change.
'The task of the first project was to search for a suitable catalyst and the right reaction control,' says Wolf. With the 'Dream Production' the contribution of the technology service provider is quite different. Bayer
Technology Services can now also offer its know-how in engineering and construction as well as in process design. For example, the company will contribute, among other things, the reactor and safety concept.
'We feel that with Bayer Technology Services we have the right partner on board for this job,' says Dr. Christoph Gürtler, “Dream Production” Project Manager at Bayer MaterialScience. This shows once again
how important the right partners are and intensive collaboration is for the success of an intricate new process. If at the end it should prove to be possible to integrate carbon dioxide in a polyol like PPP and therefore in plastics like polyurethanes, two advantages are clearly evident:
The carbon dioxide that is used will not be emitted into the atmosphere and crude oil as a raw material for polymer synthesis can be spared.
But the dream reaction can presumably allow still more.'An eco-efficiency analysis, which can quantify the total utility of a synthesis with a raw material like CO2, should show whether the entire process requires less energy overall than conventional polyol production,' says Professor Walter Leitner from the RWTH Aachen University.
(We submit that some of the data that needs included in such an "eco-efficiency analysis" would be the costs of buying and shipping oil from OPEC, the costs of fighting overseas wars to keep that OPEC oil flowing, and, the costs of lost opportunity and lost employment otherwise incurred by not using domestic US resources, like CO2, and domestic US labor to make "plastics like polyurethanes".)And the work for the other project partner also continues. At Bayer MaterialScience researchers are currently investigating whether PPP may offer an additional benefit for polyurethanes and can perhaps even lead to improved product properties.
Aurel Wolf and his team are continuing to work on a further improvement of their catalysts. The aim is still to bring the portion of carbon dioxide in the PPP as close as possible to the maximum of 43 percent by weight. After all, one thing is absolutely clear: the higher this portion, the bigger the ecological benefits.
At present more than half a billion liters of crude oil are processed for the production of polymers - every day.
This is a comparatively small share in total crude oil consumption, but every saving is welcome. And each carbon atom in a polymer that stems from carbon dioxide can save the raw material crude oil.
Besides this ecological benefit, the “Dream Production” project also offers the possibility to develop innovative products and thus to strengthen the added value of these sectors. If the “Dream Production” should one day be established throughout the industry and the separation of carbon dioxide from flue gas should become routine, then the white clouds typically billowing over coal-fueled power plants would be
completely free of carbon dioxide. And then the next dream would certainly come true."
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Gosh, that does sound kind of dreamy, doesn't it?
The "carbon dioxide that is used will not be emitted into the atmosphere", and we thus don't have to allow our vital Coal-use industries, and their customers, to be victimized by duplicitous Cap and Trade CO2 taxes; and, we won't have to indenture our grandchildren any further than we already have to OPEC in order to obtain "crude oil as a raw material for polymer synthesis".We'll have more on the specific CO2-recycling technical accomplishments of Bayer, and their Dr. Aurel Wolf and his colleagues, in some reports to follow.
But, for now, we'll note this: One of us here knows from direct personal experience that Bayer is a corporation with an immense, and deliberately-fostered, corporate culture of social responsibility and community participation.
When we refer to them as a corporate "citizen" of US Coal Country, we assure you: they do, indeed, insist on thinking of themselves as a citizen, with full acceptance of all the responsibilities that entails, including interaction with other citizens.
Our guess, in fact our certainty, is, that, if any of the half-dozen or so Coal Country journalists who are the primary addressee's of these dispatches could somehow find the motivation within themselves to pick up a phone and give Bayer a call, they would be welcomed warmly and given all the information they need to begin explaining, to the Coal Country public at large, how we can all begin to think of and treat the largest byproduct, CO2, of by far our largest natural resource, Coal, as a resource in and of itself; and, how, by beginning to employ Bayer's technologies in the utilization of that resource, we can:
Create more and better jobs and employment opportunities in US Coal Country.
Free ourselves from at least some of our dependence on OPEC.
And, free our vital Coal-use industries and their customers from the threat of Cap & Trade CO2 taxation and its associated running dogs, like the mandated sequestration of CO2 in leaky old oil wells, at the expense of consumers of Coal-based electrical power, to enable secondary petroleum recovery and to thus subsidize the profits of Big Oil.
It would be wonderful to see Bayer Corporation's technology trumpeted to the Coal Country, the entire United States, public.
Bayer deserves the recognition; and, we sure could use a little good news.
It's time we all woke up to the fact that dreams can come true.