OCOchem Advances Hydrogen Formate Electrolyzer Process By 10x To Create World’s Largest Industrial Scale CO2 Electrolyzer Cell
25 Abril 2024 - 11:00AM
Business Wire
Collaboration with US Army develops safer and
sustainable organic platform molecule at lower cost than existing
fossil-based pathways.
OCOchem today announced completion of its Phase II project with
United States Army to develop and test its 15,000cm2 formate
electrolyzer cell. The company scaled up from 10 to 15,000 cm2 over
four steps in three years to achieve an industrial scale form
factor. As a result of this new benchmark, OCOchem’s CO2
electrolyzer is 650% larger than other platforms, its final
industrial scale cell size and is now scaling out into multi-cell
stacks in a larger scale pilot plant.
OCOchem specializes in making an organic platform molecule known
as hydrogen formate through CO2 electrolysis, leveraging clean
electricity and advanced engineering technologies, instead of
sunlight and plant biology, to transform carbon dioxide and water
into valuable carbon-based molecules. Formate serves as a crucial
precursor chemical, providing both carbon and hydrogen together in
a single liquid molecule instrumental in synthesizing a diverse
array of derivative materials, chemicals, and fuels. It is the
liquid form of energized CO2 ready for use. OCOchem’s process to
make formate is known as “electro-formation” and is designed for
high (104%) carbon-to-product efficiency, high (85%) energy
efficiency, room temperature and pressure operation, and lack of
waste by-products.
The CO2 electrolyzer produces a safer and sustainable liquid
platform chemical, hydrogen formate, which can be made at a lower
cost than existing fossil-based pathways as it uses CO2, water, and
clean electricity as its only raw materials. Formate is also used
as a platform molecule to make many other molecules, which
constitute more than 20% of the $3.5 trillion/year global chemical
market.
“CO2 electrolysis has historically been an academic cottage
industry with little work done on cells much larger than a baseball
card. The OCOchem approach has been different, focusing on rapid
step change scale-up and then iterating much of the design with
every 10x scale-up increment. What works at a tiny scale is not
what works at a larger scale. We knew that and our constraints
going in. The innovative modification and integration of
off-the-shelf industrial-grade components, parts and systems,
custom chemistry, and in-house fabrication of large-scale gas
diffusion electrodes we deploy allows us to ‘live within
constraints.’ Constraints are awesome because they force you to
challenge and change the non-obvious things. It is about constant
questioning,” said OCOchem CEO and Co-Founder Todd Brix.
Adds Brix: “Doing CO2 electrolysis, at high efficiencies,
throughput, and product concentration at an industrial scale size
cell, 650% larger than previously reported 2000cm2 size, is a major
step forward to industrial commercialization. The challenges of an
industrial-scale cell relative to even 10x smaller scale cells are
completely different in type, not just in size, and require very
different process chemistries, reactor designs and electrode
fabrication techniques our team has iteratively developed to reach
new industry benchmarks.”
Central to a sustainable future is the concept of regenerated
carbon, or carbon harvesting, which emphasizes the endless circular
reutilization of CO2. This aligns with the broader principle of
waste recycling and reprocessing, enabling a circular economy where
products and their by-products, after use, are then decomposed into
molecules and reused, reflecting the natural processes of our
planet where solar energy and plants continuously cycle CO2 and
water, maintaining ecological balance.
“CO2 regeneration is a much more impactful way to reduce CO2
emissions using captured CO2. Instead of just moving and burying a
ton of CO2 and hoping it doesn’t come back out of the ground, you
instead convert that CO2 into a value-added useful product which
displaces the same product made conventionally from fossil fuels
and avoids the 5-10 tons of CO2 emissions associated with fossil
fuel use as a feedstock as well as use of fossil fuel process
energy used to make it,” explains Todd Brix.
“Carbon is the backbone of life, and CO2 has historically been
the source of carbon that life uses, not fossil fuels. The CO2
electrolysis technology being developed by OCOchem will enable
humankind to re-obtain this state of carbon sourcing and
balancing,” said Dr. Robert Weber, former Senior Research Scientist
who led early work at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory into
formate as a liquid hydrogen carrier.
Formate is utilized in everyday applications such as silage
preservatives, corrosion-free deicing salts, drilling fluids,
fertilizers, and in the manufacture of leather and clothing. It
also plays a crucial role in tire and rubber production, bacterial
disinfection, and waste and feed water treatment, and as an
emerging liquid carrier of hydrogen and carbon oxides.
“OCOchem is on its way to becoming a central player in the
development of a circular carbon economy. Our chief objective is to
use clean electricity to regenerate past and present carbon dioxide
emissions into value-added products. Instead of harvesting carbon
from fossil fuels or crops we can just directly harvest carbon from
the CO2 in the air and point sources and make most of the organic
molecules we need from that. This approach not only avoids
extracting and releasing more carbon from fossil fuels but also
reduces pressure on biodiversity and food and feed supplies by
reducing the need to convert forests and grasslands into molecule
crops,” said Brix.
About OCOchem
Located in Richland, Washington, OCOchem’s founding mission is
to “use, not waste, CO2.” This mission is realized by converting
recycled CO2 into a “green” platform organic molecule, using just
clean electricity and water, and doing that at a progressively
lower cost than the fossil-fueled pathway for making the same
molecule. By making a “platform” organic molecule, it can be used
as a building block to synthesize a wide range of other molecules
that make up most of the materials, chemicals, and fuels our
society uses that are today made primarily from fossil fuels. This
approach inverts the current economic incentives to extract,
combust, and release the carbon embodied in fossil fuels by
providing lower-cost substitutes made from CO2. For more
information visit: www.ocochem.com
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Steven Gottlieb steven@gottliebgroup.consulting