Work headed by an Ohio waste-to-energy company to make plastic from biodigester byproducts is among seven projects recently selected for federal grants to develop new ways to use captured carbon dioxide. 

The grants aim to advance the federal government’s goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 in order to address ongoing climate change. 

Quasar Energy Group, headquartered south of Cleveland in Independence, designs and builds anaerobic digesters, in which bacteria break down manure, food waste, or other organic materials. Methane is the systems’ main gas output and can be used to power generators or heat buildings, among other uses. 

But anaerobic digesters also produce carbon dioxide, another greenhouse gas which has fewer commercial uses. Customers today include fertilizer manufacturers, oil and gas companies, and food and beverage makers. But those markets are tiny compared to the amount of CO₂ scientists think will need to be removed from industrial emissions, or even pulled from the atmosphere, to deal with climate change. 

There’s a limit to how much carbon dioxide will be able to be stored in the ground, and community opposition to pipelines is another barrier to Midwest carbon capture plans. Using the carbon in products — such as cement or plastics — can be a useful alternative, especially if it displaces other fossil fuel inputs. 

On Oct. 9, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management announced funding for seven projects aimed at commercializing new approaches to incorporating carbon dioxide into products. The selections are aimed at hard-to-decarbonize sectors, said Ian Rowe, division director for carbon dioxide conversion at DOE’s office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management. 

“There’s not going to be a non-carbon solution for those needs in the future, but we should make them from more sustainable forms of carbon,” Rowe said. “And carbon dioxide represents a feedstock that you can use.”

How the process works

Ohio is already a leader in plastics production that relies heavily on the fossil fuel industry. Hundreds of companies across the state play a role in manufacturing or the supply chain. And midstream processing provides a ready supply of natural gas feedstocks from the Utica shale play.

Quasar Energy’s team designed its process for making plastic so it will work well with biodigesters. Basically, the project will use lipids from algae as a feedstock for a type of polyurethane. Liquid effluent from the biodigester could help grow the algae and supply nutrients for it, such as nitrogen and phosphorus.

Carbon dioxide from the biogester’s gas would be another ingredient in the process. The project team estimates the process could cut carbon dioxide emissions at least 25%, compared to current technology for making the plastic.

The process already works on a bench-scale level in the lab, said Tao Dong, a chemical engineer with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado, who is also working on the project. Other team members named in the group’s grant application to DOE include Caixia “Ellen” Wan at the University of Missouri, Xumeng Ge at Quasar, and Ashton Zeller, director of research at Algix.

Costs are an important factor for the Quasar team’s project or any other products aimed at displacing those made from fossil fuel sources. Those costs include expenses for “cleaning up” the biodigester gas to separate methane from carbon dioxide. But a chunk of that expense also can be allocated to the separated methane, which has its own value for energy, either for on-site use or for sale for use elsewhere. 

In other words, using the gas for making the plastic and for energy helps the economics for both uses, versus just flaring the gas into the atmosphere.

“Our process can be cost-effective,” said Yebo Li, Quasar’s chief innovation and science officer. 

The plastic made from the process also has an advantage from being a non-isocyanate polyurethane, said Mel Kurtz, president of Quasar. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration links isocyanates to various health problems, and some are potential carcinogens. So, a polyurethane plastic that doesn’t have them should reduce risks for workers at factories who would then use the material to manufacture products, such as shoes or other items.

“If [farms] can add another revenue stream, that can improve the economics” for biodigesters on farms, said Andy Olsen, a senior policy advocate for the Environmental Law & Policy Center, whose work focuses on energy issues relating to agriculture and is not part of the project team. 

It’s also important to make sure staff are properly trained to use and maintain the equipment properly, Olsen added, noting potential problems with leaked gases. Others question whether emissions offsets from some biodigesters have been overstated.

Next steps

The Quasar project team still faces hurdles. Work under the grant will focus on identifying and addressing risks so the technology can be scaled up.

One challenge will be maintaining algae ponds over time to provide the lipids for the process. Another will be optimizing the process for making them into small chemical building blocks called monomers and then assembling them into polymers, which are the plastic. Maintaining the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions over time also will be important.

Other Midwest grant recipients include LanzaTech, an Illinois sustainable fuels company, and Washington University in St. Louis, which will develop a low-carbon process to convert carbon dioxide to high-quality carbon nanotubes. Those will be tested for use as anodes for lithium-ion batteries.

Whether these and other carbon management projects can scale up quickly enough for the United States to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 is a big question, said Rowe at DOE.

The energy source for the production process will also make a big difference, Rowe said. Algae can make their own food with carbon dioxide and sunlight. But it takes energy to maintain the ponds throughout the year. The equipment to process the algae and then make the lipids and biodigesters’ carbon dioxide into polyurethane also needs energy.

“Carbon management strategies go hand in hand with an increased deployment of cheap clean electricity. So, a lot of these won’t work without the other,” Rowe said. On the flip side, “if that energy does not come from clean sources, you’ve just produced something that is worse for the environment than if you dug it up and just used fossil carbon.” 

Where will captured carbon go? Ohio company among those seeking to embed it in new products is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Illinois’s carbon dioxide pipeline and sequestration law passed May 26 is being described as among the nation’s strictest. It is only the second carbon dioxide pipeline moratorium in the U.S., after California, and it creates a significant permitting process once the moratorium is lifted.

But landowners and advocates are still unhappy with several key provisions left out of the law, and said they are exploring options to end the use of eminent domain for carbon pipelines and protect landowners from carbon being sequestered in their underground pore space against their will.

“There’s a lot of good in there, but it definitely is a work in progress in terms of guard rails,” said Jennifer Cassel, a senior attorney for Earthjustice who worked with the Illinois Clean Jobs Coalition that endorsed the new law after members previously worked with lawmakers on a stronger bill. “The federal uncertainty was part of the push, and there’s so much of a gold rush already happening,” with applications for 22 carbon dioxide injection wells pending in the state, plus various pipeline proposals.

SB 1289, or the SAFE Act, allows a company seeking to sequester carbon to move forward if the owners of 75% of the affected land agree to the plan, which provides them compensation. That means, critics note, that owners of 25% of the land cannot stop a project, even if they are opposed. Owners of small several-acre parcels would have few rights compared to large landowners, noted Pam Richart, co-founder of the Coalition to Stop CO2 Pipelines.

The coalition had worked with lawmakers on a much more stringent bill, which would have limited the use of eminent domain to acquire land for pipelines and sequestration. It would also have banned the injection of carbon dioxide through the Mahomet Aquifer. The Farm Bureau opposed the SAFE Act in part because it didn’t address eminent domain, though the new law includes some protections regarding compensation for land damage.  

“Landowners are profoundly disappointed that the act was approved without eminent domain [limits],” Richart said.  “The landowner protections weren’t as strong as we hoped.”

The coalition’s preferred bill would not have allowed forced integration of pore space against landowners’ will. Richart said they expected some compromise on that front, but not to the extent enshrined in the SAFE Act.  

“That’s not how this is supposed to work,” she said. “If a project is in the public interest, you wouldn’t expect landowners of 25% of the land to hold out.”

The SAFE Act stands for Safety and Aid for the Environment in Carbon Capture and Sequestration. It still awaits signature by Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who has indicated he will sign it, and bills become law after 60 days in Illinois if the governor takes no action. 

Future options

Richart said advocates don’t plan to “reopen the whole process” around legislation, but hope to work with legislators on a trailer bill that could increase protections for landowners.

“A lot of legislators expressed serious concern about the aquifer, I wouldn’t be surprised if those issues and potentially others come back up in some form,” Cassel said.

The new law places a moratorium on new carbon dioxide pipelines for two years or until the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration issues regulations for carbon dioxide pipelines, which are in the works. The previous bill advocates backed included a moratorium of four years or until the federal regulations are adopted. Cassel said labor unions felt that moratorium was too long.   

Richart said the Illinois law is only a “quasi-moratorium” since companies can begin the application process for new pipelines even before the PHMSA regulations come out.

Meanwhile the SAFE Act does not include setbacks from properties for carbon dioxide pipelines. If the PHMSA regulations do not include setbacks, which is likely, Illinois advocates could push for setbacks under the permitting process created by the SAFE Act, since it allows for additional safety measures to be developed provided they are not in conflict with federal regulations.

Advocates say county governments, which have in multiple cases refused to approve sequestration sites connected to pipelines, could work together to push for setback policy.

Benefits of new law

Advocates are grateful for a robust public engagement process created by the new law.

“Before there was no requirement to notify anybody about a carbon dioxide pipeline except when the Illinois Commerce Commission was ready to begin its application process,” said Richart, citing two recent controversial proposals. “Wolf never notified anybody, One Earth never notified anybody. The commerce commission just said, ‘You better come to this hearing, it might be subject to eminent domain.’”

The Illinois Commerce Commission decides whether a given proposal is in the public interest and able to invoke eminent domain, but previously the commission had no authority over carbon sequestration sites and its consideration of pipelines was largely limited to property values.  

The SAFE Act creates a permitting process that requires companies hold two public meetings in each affected county and post materials about the proposal and public comment process. Under the new law, the Illinois Commerce Commission can consider safety and other information in deciding whether to grant eminent domain powers.

Under the new law, companies must also pay into an emergency response fund and create an emergency plan, which entails modeling about possible risks and the expected distribution of carbon dioxide plumes in case of a leak.

“They have to do computational fluid dynamics modeling, and they have to make it public, at a time when there is a definite movement by pipeline developers to make their modeling proprietary, confidential,” said Richart. “So this is huge.”

Companies doing carbon injection and sequestration must also put up money for future environmental mitigation, so future costs don’t fall on the state. The law does not allow self-bonding, a controversial financing mechanism used by coal companies in the past that ultimately forced the state to foot the bill for mine cleanup.

The SAFE Act also enshrines safeguards to make sure that carbon capture and sequestration doesn’t ultimately lead to an increase in air pollution by allowing coal plants to keep operating, and it prohibits the use of carbon dioxide for enhanced oil recovery.

These protections gained approval from environmental justice organizations like the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, a member of the Illinois Clean Jobs Coalition.

The Illinois Corn Growers Association and Illinois Renewable Fuels Association also backed the new law. Their members stand to benefit from the expansion of the ethanol industry, which depends on carbon sequestration to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. While carbon capture and sequestration was launched in Illinois in relation to coal plants, recent pipeline proposals have focused primarily on connecting ethanol plants to sequestration sites.

State Rep. Ann Williams, a sponsor of the law, said in a statement that:

“Illinois is a national leader on climate and energy policy, and SB 1289 ensures that if companies are going to use CCS as a climate mitigation strategy, they will need to meet some of the strongest standards in the nation. The CCS protections bill ensures critical guardrails are in place to protect Illinois taxpayers, landowners and our environment.”

Illinois passed ‘strongest standards in the nation’ on carbon sequestration, but advocates say more work is needed is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.