Orion Engineered Carbons (Houston, Texas, USA), a global supplier of specialty and high-performance carbon black, has partnered with Research Institutes of Sweden (RISE) (Gothenburg, Sweden) on a project to develop and produce renewable carbon black. According to Orion, this partnership “represents an important step toward more climate-neutral carbon black production” with pyrolysis oil—which is sometimes known as bio-crude or biomass oil—replacing traditional carbon black feedstock made with hydrocarbon fuels such as oil and gas.
Orion plans to convert biomass oil, a synthetic fuel used as a substitute for petroleum, into carbon black using its small-scale furnace reactor in Kalscheuren, Germany. The company will then explore ways to upscale the process to meet market demands, while RISE will evaluate the use of electrofuels, such as plasma or hydrogen from electrolysis, as sustainable heat sources for the carbon black process.
“We are committed to meeting the rising interest in renewable carbon black as the tire industry works to address its long-term goal of reducing fossil-derived feedstocks across the supply chain,” says David Deters, senior vice president for Orion Engineered Carbons. “This partnership is yet another step in our sustainability strategy and we look forward to partnering with RISE on this exciting and critically important project.”
In previous research, RISE has demonstrated that carbon black using pyrolysis oil from wood-derived feedstock could be produced at an economically feasible scale. For its part, Orion has made it a project goal to validate commercial production based on this research.
Source: Orion Engineered Carbons, https://orioncarbons.com.