Plastic made from air: the circular future of chemistry

What are you currently working on?

Our most developed technology is a building block that replaces the T in PET. PET is known from plastic bottles. We are now building a factory in Delfzijl to commercially produce this replacement building block and PEF polyester as the first in the world. In addition, I am mainly busy with the early-stage pipeline: for example, we have a technology that uses CO2 as a raw material. From this, we make polyesters, among other things. We also do this together with PhD students from the UvA. I also have a part-time appointment as professor of Industrial Sustainable Chemistry at the Van ‘t Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences.

Can you mention one or two recent breakthroughs in your field?

Looking at those two future raw materials, biomass and CO2, there’s a limit to how much biomass is available. For energy, but also for construction, for building houses, for example. Thus, CO2 will also play an important role as a carbon source. We just finished a very large EU program, Ocean, where we built a demonstrator to electrochemically convert CO2 to oxalic acid. Our pre-pilot unit is the largest electrochemical cell that has ever run and has been able to convert about 250 grams of CO2 per hour. At RWE in Germany, this unit has produced stably for more than 1000 hours. This is a major breakthrough in CCU, carbon capture and utilization. This will be important as a carbon source in the future. Carbon sources with a potential negative footprint; because you bring CO2 from the air into your products, and if you do that with green energy, those products then have a negative carbon footprint. This is important because we can’t just go to zero emissions, but to net-zero emissions, which means you have to compensate remaining emissions with negative emissions. And this is important for that, so this is a very important breakthrough. In the same project, we were able to make plastic with very good properties such as very low gas permeability, combined with good strength and recyclability, that is also made from CO2. Although it is designed for end-of-life recycling, the material biodegrades within 6 months if it ends up in the environment.

Often it is said: chemistry is finished, everything has been developed. But nothing could be further from the truth. We are at the beginning of a major transition, where we not only have to develop new plastics but everything also has to be circular. Now we’re just talking about carbon, but if you look at the periodic table, there are only fifteen elements that are partially recycled; all other elements are not or hardly recycled. So much more needs to be done there. I often tell students that there is actually no better time to study chemistry than now.

The biggest concern is not always whether these technologies will ever be successful, but especially: are we too early? The world doesn’t seem ready yet. And you really notice that we’re putting a lot of money into sustainable technology, but there’s still no roadmap to phase out fossil fuels. Transition means: stopping something and replacing it with something else; but that stopping isn’t happening. That makes it very difficult because we have to compete on costs with super cheap fossil alternatives.

How do you see that process further developing?

We shouldn’t close existing assets, but for everything that’s newly built, we should use new technologies. That means we need to start using carbon from above the ground. And the Netherlands is also committed to this, but there’s no roadmap. The government needs to play an important role in this. If you only build new technologies (and no more fossil technology), then the phasing out of fossil fuels will happen naturally (over 30 years the current fossil assets will be closed or outdated).

How does your collaboration with research work? How did it come about? Do you collaborate with parties at the Science Park?

Avantium is a technology company, so for us, research is core business. In 2016, I received a part-time appointment at the UvA, a chair in industrial sustainable chemistry. With a group of about 10 PhD and master students, I work on that transition, and I can look at a number of other aspects such as recycling, biodegradation, what happens to plastics in the environment. I also have a student in social psychology, who looks at consumer behavior, and the confusion among consumers about bio-based and recycling. Our research shows that we need to look at how we not only create a technology-push but also develop a market-pull. Consumers must force the market to use new sustainable plastic, then the whole chain will automatically follow. Producers always claim: the consumer doesn’t want to pay more for sustainability. But our research shows that’s not true. People feel guilty about plastic use and want a sustainable solution, and are also willing to pay a bit more for it.

The problem with the climate is that it was always far away, in time and space; floods in Bangladesh are far away. Now it’s close; Venice has been underwater, and last year it was Limburg’s turn. The effect is getting closer. People want to do something about the problems of plastic and are really willing to go the extra step.

Legislation is coming that you have to use more recycled or bio-based content in packaging. All kinds of single-use items are already banned, plastic plates, cutlery, and straws. They are also working on banning or single-use non-recyclable packaging. Slowly but surely, things are starting to move. But it’s still too slow. To give you an impression, of all the plastics we make, now about half a percent is sustainable, from the point of view of the raw materials used. We’re still at the very beginning of the materials transition, much more at the beginning than in terms of energy.

What do you think the ecosystem at Amsterdam Science Park has to offer companies like Avantium on the path to the plastic transition?

For us, the interaction with the university is very important. So we offer a lab where PhD and master students can work. They can use our facilities to make and test plastics on a kilogram scale, but they can also use the infrastructure of the university. The collaboration gives them the opportunity to work in an industrial setting on topics that are not only scientifically interesting but also have societal impact.

And the topics are very appealing to students. So that’s what the Science Park offers, that you can work together in this way. Also, this kind of collaboration gets the link between science and application in society right, because we look mainly at whether ideas are techno-economically viable: whether a technology is both technically and cost-effectively applicable.

Occasionally, it is claimed that applied research stands in the way of real science, but I completely disagree with that. Because for all the things we want to apply, basic science is incredibly important. You need to know how it works, how it’s put together, how you can improve it, how you can make everything as optimal as possible to apply it. That offers a huge scientific challenge.