(151b) Catalytic Reforming for Syngas Production Using Industrial CO2: Carbon Capture and Chemical Manufacturing

Enerkem produces biofuels and renewable chemicals from waste. Its disruptive proprietary technology converts non-recyclable, non-compostable municipal solid waste into methanol and ethanol. Earlier this year, Enerkem expanded its Edmonton biofuel facility to produce some 13 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol annually following the commissioning of its methanol-to-ethanol conversion unit. In addition to ethanol, Enerkem plans to develop other widely-used chemical intermediates such as acetic acid, methyl acetate and acrylic acid through advanced catalysis. One of the recent developments is the scale-up of the Enerkem’s reforming catalyst (E20) through Unicat Catalyst Technologies for generating CO-rich syngas for downstream carbonylation process. This syngas production route utilizes a dry reforming approach and converts waste CO₂ (procured either from the Enerkem process or any other fossil-based process) and natural gas to generate syngas with very stable performance. This increase in syngas production has the potential to improve the liquid products yield per bone-metric dry ton (BDMT) of the processed feedstock with significant carbon capture potential. The presentation will highlight the research on scaling the technologies developed to date from bench scale to pilot scale and on tailoring the process conditions of the technologies to facilitate integration into a bio-refinery platform.