Although carbon dioxide (CO2) is a greenhouse gas, it can also serve as a resource – for example, for plastics or renewable fuels – and thus replace fossil natural gas and crude oil in the future. The extraction of CO2 from the air contributes in several ways to combating climate change: it makes it usable for the chemical industry and for renewable mobility, thus making it possible in future to reduce emissions compared with the use of fossil fuels. Several technologies are already available for capturing the CO2 contained in air for subsequent raw material syntheses. The CORAL project, which is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, will initially determine which method is best suited for minimising the energy required for supplying CO2. This can be achieved, for example, by utilising waste heat arising from other process steps for the CO2 desorption.
In the next step, the plan is to build a pilot plant to test this process. The aim is to provide CO2 suitable for synthesis, from which key chemical compounds such as methanol, dimethyl ether and propylene could then be produced by regenerative means using purely renewable resources