Personal care chemical makers BASF and Croda are among 15 organisations involved in the Flue2Chem carbon capture project, which has secured £2.68m ($3.22m) of funding from Innovate UK.
The £5.4m, two-year programme aims to convert industrial waste gases into chemicals that can be used to manufacture superior and more sustainable consumer products.
It will use FluRefin carbon capture technology, which has been developed in collaboration with AESSEAL and has been short-listed for ‘The Engineer Awards’.
This technology has been licensed to CCU International Limited, who will deliver a 1 tonne per day portable capture system in the early months of the project.
The other participants are Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Tata Steel, UPM-Kymmene, Holmen, Johnson Matthey, The University of Surrey, Carbon Clean, Centre for Process Innovation, Confederation of Paper Industries, Reckitt, the University of Sheffield and the Society of Chemical Industry.
“This is a game-changing opportunity to accelerate action and rewire the chemicals value chain to be less reliant on fossil fuels. It’s a bold ambition and one that, at Unilever, we have been publicly calling for action on over the last two years,” said project lead Ian Howell, Unilever’s Home Care Science and Technology R&D director.
“No single company can do this alone and so to have the power of 15 manufacturers and academics marks a significant step forward not only for the UK, but globally too.”
