Facility represents the primary industrial-scale software of a CO2 Electrolysis procedure using commercial grade and size gas diffusion electrodes measuring 1.5m2 every in surface area
OCOchem lately introduced the successful start-up and commissioning of the world’s primary pilot plant to produce hydrogen formate and potassium formate at commercial scale using only carbon dioxide and water as feedstocks. The $5.0 million facility, capable to generating 60 tons of formate consistent with year, represents the primary industrial-scale application of a CO2 Electrolysis method using commercial grade and size gas diffusion electrodes measuring 1.5m2 each in surface area.
The new plant leverages a four-cell stack of the world’s largest CO₂ electrolyzer cells —each measuring 1.5sq meters in gas diffusion electrode surface area —and perform at ambient temperature and pressure to produce formate with unparalleled energy and cost efficiency. Formate, a liquid natural molecule, is a flexible chemical utilized in agriculture, production, prescription drugs, cleansing products, steel processing and increasingly as a liquid provider for hydrogen and carbon monoxide (syngas).
“For the last 3 centuries, humanity’s alternatives to harvest beneficial carbon molecules have been constrained to two: both grow it in the form of vegetation taking months or mine it from the earth in the form of hydrocarbons which takes millennia. We now have a third way, CO2 Electrolysis, to directly and immediately synthesize organic molecules from CO2 and water. This artificial photosynthesis approach – using industrial-scale additives – substantially reduces technology risk. And it allows us to boost up our scale-out commercialization efforts at large plant with thousands of cells,” said Todd Brix, CEO of OCOchem. “We’re proud to be the first to bring it to life at an commercial scale—unlocking a brand new third pathway to organic molecule manufacturing without counting on fossil fuels or biomass.”
Adds Brix: “In the world we see moving ahead, the new platform molecules, the precursor molecules from which all other organic molecules are made, will more and more begin and be made from the molecules that may be made from CO2 at a decrease cost than the incumbent fossil gas-derived feedstocks. That means a C1 molecule, and which means a 2-electron molecule. Of all the carbon molecules that can be made from CO2, only hydrogen formate (also called formic acid) can meet this standard with today’s energy cost.”
