In a project begun 1 July and due to be completed by 2016, three German industrial powerhouses – the world’s largest chemical and plastics producer BASF (Ludwigshafen; www.basf.com), gases and engineering giant Linde (Munich; www.the-linde-group.com) and the engineering division of ThyssenKrupp (Essen; www.thyssenkrupp.com) – have teamed up to develop an “environmentally friendly and competitive” process for using CO₂ gas as an industrial feedstock.

The two-stage project coordinated by BASF is being funded to the tune of EUR 9.2m by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and calls for experimental research into gas decomposition and catalyst development for synthesis gas. Working alongside BASF subsidiary hte will be German scientific partners GerVDEh-Betriebsforschungsinstitut in Düsseldorf and the TU Dortmund University.

In the first stage, the research will focus on an "innovative high-temperature technology" to produce hydrogen and carbon using CO₂ feedstock. BASF said the technology will produce “very little CO₂” compared with other processes. In a second step, hydrogen will be reacted with large volumes of carbon dioxide sourced partly from industrial plants to produce syngas as a raw material for chemicals. CO₂ emissions from the process are forecast to be about 50% lower than in current standard processes.

Based on the technology, the partners plan to develop a pilot plant design and a concept for integrating the process into existing chemical and steel-producing sites.