SBIR Phase II: Utilizing Carbon Dioxide (CO2) as a Feedstock to Produce Commodity Chemicals

Award ID: 2151548

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project is abating carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the production of terephthalic acid, a large-scale commodity chemical. Development of this technology will provide a pathway for direct utilization of CO2 in everyday products. For example, implemented at scale, the proposed process has potential to sequester about 20 million metric tons of CO2 annually, equivalent to the emissions from 4.3 million cars. This project also has significant commercial potential. By delivering a lower-carbon product at lower cost than the current technology, the proposed innovation has the potential to become the de facto standard for manufacturing this commodity chemical. Annual licensing and ancillary revenue from a single plant is estimated at $30 million, and at 70-80% market share, typical for the dominant process, annual revenue could grow to over $1.5 billion. The success of this project will also provide a scientific and entrepreneurial blueprint to spur similar efforts thus advancing the state of the art of CO2 utilization technologies. This SBIR Phase II project proposes to develop a light-driven chemical technology that enables the use of CO2 as a raw material in large scale chemical production of terephthalic acid. This project abates CO2 emissions by converting CO2, captured from point sources such as industrial flue stacks or direct air capture, to useful chemical and consumer products. Carbon dioxide is a stable compound and is typically unreactive and therefore incompatible with traditional heat-driven processes. The proposed project will help mature the technology of CO2 activation by photocatalysis, which has been shown to be effective in inducing CO2 reactivity. The first step is to demonstrate the feasibility of using CO2 to produce the target chemical at bench scale. Next, the reaction performance will be optimized using high-throughput experimentation techniques. Finally, the process will be scaled up in a photo flow photoreactor. In this part of the project, engineering scale up issues will be addressed as a precursor to realizing a production plant. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Program Director: Rajesh Mehta