Sustainable Carbon Feedstock
In high school, we were introduced to organic compounds, which is compound consisting of carbon as the main composition. Carbon is an element that is essential for life, without Carbon there would be no life because living things are composed of organic components. The nature of Carbon which can form stable bonds with various molecules, including itself, makes Carbon capable of forming various elements, even very complex ones. Because of that, we can find Carbon in the goods around us. The clothes we wear, the food we eat, even the screens we currently stare at, all of that is made up of Carbon. No exception for the chemicals we usually use, detergents, soaps, and so on.
Where does Carbon come from?
There is a fact that chemical and allied industries create the product from over 63 million tons per year of Carbon building blocks derived from petroleum (83%) and natural gas (17%). Yes, that Carbon mostly comes from fossil sources, which means industry pump carbon from the ground to make their chemical product. And of course, to carry out their production, they need energy. From the production process, Carbon gas which is generally in the form of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is released as emission.
We all know that CO2 is one of the greenhouse gasses (GHG) that can cause global warming or an increase in temperature on earth, which of course can threaten the balance of life on earth. Besides emission in the form of CO2 gas, humans with their activities have contributed to other problems for the environment, which is waste, especially in the form of used packaging for household products. Do you guys realize that the rubbish is also composed of Carbon? So now you might be thinking,
Why should we pump Carbon from under the ground if it is enough above it?
It can be said that there has been an imbalance between Carbon requirements and the adverse environmental impacts associated with its utilization. Besides that, it should be remembered that key challenges faced by the global community in the 21 century are global warming, natural resources depletion, economic growth, and growing waste problem. To facilitate such a transformation, the chemical industry — as the producer of numerous carbon-based products essential for the functioning of our daily life — plays a critical role. An example of a large industry that has started this movement is Unilever.
Concern about environmental impacts, carbon leakages along the international supply chain, and depleting resources, Unilever, as one of the leading manufacturer of cleaning and laundry products, declares itself to make a Carbon transition, which is replacing Carbon sources that originally came from fossil fuels with renewable or recycles Carbon. They even came up with an interesting concept, which they called The Carbon Rainbow.
In the model scheme, the black arrow indicates non-renewable fossil sources of Carbon (black carbon) which will be replaced using captured CO2 (purple carbon), plants and biological sources (green carbon), marine sources such as algae (blue carbon), and carbon recovered from waste materials (grey carbon). Imagine if this model was successfully developed by many chemical industries, it would certainly have a very significant positive impact on the environment. It is known from the International Energy Agency (IEA) data, that the industrial sector accounts for 23% of the total global energy-related CO2 emissions. Sounds promising, doesn’t it?
But, how easy is it to do?
Transitioning to an alternative feedstock of Carbon requires more than simply changing raw materials. It entails developing new growing and harvesting techniques preparation infrastructure, and new chemical pathways and chemical processing technologies. The transition should focus on significant and new research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) work, which will require substantial financial and intellectual investment. Refer to the result of the American Chemical Society (ACS) study about sustainable US Manufacturing: Chemical and Allied Industries, there are 4 RD&D areas that essential.
The first is renewable feedstock Infrastructure. To achieve feedstock sustainability, in this case, carbon feedstock, it is necessary to prepare a new infrastructure that includes growing, transport, storage, etc. Therefore, there is a need for cooperation between renewable feedstock owners and suppliers, equipment suppliers, feedstock processers, and the chemical and allied industries.
The second area is the new chemical conversion pathways and technology. Utilizing new component feedstock is certainly very different from the traditional one, derived from oil and gas (fossil). It requires new chemical pathways and technology. As an example, plant or biomass as the carbon feedstock compared to fossil-derived, biomass has a more complex chemical structure and contains more components. These factors add considerable complexity to the economical and efficient conversion of biomass chemical structures into useful chemical building blocks.
No less important, economic and efficient processing technologies. Developing new chemical pathways and technologies must carefully balance the use of existing capital assets with the design of efficient processes. One of the examples is Carbon Dioxide (CO2) — an inexpensive and renewable feedstock — could theoretically act as a possible starting candidate for chemical building blocks but would require the development of transformational technologies for its economic capture and efficient conversion.
RD&D also needs to be done in new materials and products. It is clear that to realize a Carbon transition, it is necessary to develop innovative renewable or recycled materials and products. The goal is to improve energy density and the ease of harvesting the products. The goals must succeed while keeping the products and processes profitable, sustainable, and environmentally benign.
In order to achieve a Carbon transition or sustainable Carbon feedstock, a robust partnership between industry, academia, and the government is needed. However, the success of achieving the sustainability goals, reduction of fossil fuel demand, and efforts to conserve the environment depends on how well we can use household products efficiently.
In other words, we also play an important role in this great change.
References:
ACS (American Chemistry Society). 2020. Sustainable U.S. Manufacturing: Chemical and Allied Industries: Alternative Feedstocks
IEA (International Energy Agency). 2020. The Role of CCUS in Low-Carbon Power System. IEA
Lee, Roh Pin. 2019. Alternative Carbon Feedstock for the Chemical Industry? — Assessing the Challenges Posed by the Human Dimension in the Carbon Transition. Journal of Clean Production. 219: 789–796
Muller, Jan Leonard, et al. 2020. The Carbon Footprint of the Carbon Feedstock CO2. Energy & Environmental Science. 1–28
Unilever. 2020. Unilever to Eliminate Fossil Fuels in Cleaning Products by 2030. https://www.unilever.com/news/press-releases/2020/unilever-to-invest-1-billion-to-eliminate-fossil-fuels-in-cleaning-products-by-2030.html (accessed on 26 September 2020)
