Scientists trying to convert carbon dioxide into materials used in cleaning products have reached a key milestone by producing ethanol from carbon dioxide captured from papermills in Cumbria and Scotland.

As reported on the SCI website, Flue2Chem, a UK-based global science hub made up of 17 businesses, universities, and start-ups, is collaborating to develop a new supply chain that uses an alternative source of carbon to replace virgin fossil fuel as a raw material for everyday household goods. The aim is to reduce reliance on petrochemical extraction for many everyday consumer products, helping the UK move closer to its net zero goals.

In April 2024, biogenic carbon began being captured from the flue gas emissions at the Holmen Iggesund Paperboard Mill in Cumbria, northern England. A second carbon capture trial is currently taking place at the UPM Caledonian paper mill in Irvine, Scotland.

This latest milestone is the culmination of work carried out over the last 20 months by scientists at the international chemical company, BASF to develop a new catalyst to convert captured CO₂ into ethanol. By integrating cutting-edge computational modelling and machine learning alongside testing under real conditions, scientists were able to more accurately predict the properties such catalysts would need to optimise the production of ethanol.

Ethanol is important because it can be used to make a wide range of useful chemicals with applications across the cosmetics, industrial, and pharmaceutical sectors. While the UK chemicals and pharmaceuticals industry is worth an estimated £73 billion, the estimated worth of the global market for non-ionic surfactants specifically is £11.5 billion annually, forecast to grow by around 5% per year until 2030.

With this novel catalyst and process, the research stands to unlock a number of applications for the use of CO₂ as a more sustainable raw material.

Said Darren Budd, Commercial Director at BASF in the UK and Ireland, “We’re proud to play our part in the Flue2Chem collaboration using smart chemistry to successfully demonstrate how captured CO₂ can be converted into ethanol, a key building block for many household cleaning products and chemical processes.

“Converting CO₂ into ethanol is a key process if we are going to be successful in unlocking the potential of alternative raw materials needed for a net zero future. Further collaboration is needed to enable these processes to work at scale. We need to embed these innovations into existing chemical value and supply chains, so they have greater potential to be scaled up quickly and efficiently.”

Flue2Chem is a two-year demonstration project supported by Innovate UK. It seeks to redesign and validate a UK value chain to convert valuable carbon emissions into sustainable materials for consumer products. Academic and industry specialists are assessing the environmental and socio-economic implications of this new potential raw material source and the project is on track to publish its findings in June 2025.

Learn more here.