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Recyc­ling of Resid­ual Mater­i­als and CO2

Every year and on a glob­al scale, humans release more than 30 bil­lion tons of car­bon diox­ide (CO2) into the atmo­sphere. This green­house gas emerges par­tic­u­larly dur­ing the com­bus­tion of fossil raw mater­i­als such as crude oil. Sim­ul­tan­eously, the cir­cu­lar eco­nomy receives increas­ingly more soci­et­al and eco­pol­it­ic­al sig­ni­fic­ance. Wherever pos­sible, sus­tain­able raw mater­i­als should be used to save fossil and nat­ur­al resources, and to enhance, instead of to dis­pose, resid­ual mater­i­als and products at their end of life. 

The use of bio­mass instead of crude oil for sim­il­ar applic­a­tions is eco­nom­ic­ally still in the early stages of devel­op­ment. In addi­tion, it is import­ant to con­sider that a grow­ing glob­al pop­u­la­tion requires more and more fer­tile land to meet the pro­duc­tion of food and anim­al feed­stuff. Mak­ing fore­casts is dif­fi­cult and com­pet­i­tion for land use can­not be excluded either. These con­flicts can be avoided by using resid­ual and waste materials. 

Car­bon from renew­able resources

Car­bon bonds are giv­en in any liv­ing organ­ism and serve as the basis of the organ­ic chem­istry. Except for in food, car­bon bonds are con­tained in all import­ant products of our mod­ern daily life. These products com­prise phar­ma­ceut­ic­als, cos­met­ics, appar­el, house­hold chem­ic­als, plastics, col­ors, fuels, etc. Tra­di­tion­ally, these products are cre­ated through organo-chem­ic­al reac­tions and pro­cesses based on crude oil. For 100 to 150 years, mainly crude oil cov­ers the glob­al sup­ply of energy and chem­ic­al products.

Cur­rently, our soci­ety faces the lim­ited­ness of crude oil and gen­er­al fossil resources. More and more, we recon­sider the grow­ing envir­on­ment­al and cli­mate impacts through unres­trained con­sump­tion of resources and an increas­ing CO2 out­put. To meet these chal­lenges, we recog­nize tre­mend­ous efforts to trans­form fuel and elec­tri­city pro­duc­tion by altern­at­ive ener­gies such as wind, water and sol­ar energy. Regard­ing the mater­i­al use of crude oil, we must change our crude oil con­sump­tion for the same reas­ons and draw on more sus­tain­able feed­stock. These mater­i­als include resid­ual mater­i­als and waste flows from forestry and agri­cul­ture, the food pro­cessing industry or pulp and paper industry. From these flows, sec­ond­ary plant mater­i­als can be gen­er­ated, such as phen­olic bonds, terpenes, hydroxyl fatty acids or wax.

Com­pared to fossil raw mater­i­als, a the­or­et­ic­al neut­ral CO2-bal­ance can be achieved dur­ing the usage (and com­bus­tion) of sus­tain­able mater­i­als. This neut­ral bal­ance derives from the fact that only CO2 from the atmo­sphere is released which was ini­tially bon­ded by plants. This CO2, released by biobased mater­i­als, will be bon­ded again dur­ing plant growth and does not increase the atmo­spher­ic CO2 con­cen­tra­tion in toto (cir­cu­lar­ity).

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