Celanese begins carbon capture ops at Texas facility
Materials firm Celanese Corporation has announced it has begun running a carbon capture and utilisation (CCU) project at its Clear Lake, Texas, site as part of its Fairway methanol joint venture with Mitsui & Co., Ltd. The project is expected to capture 180,000 tonnes of CO2 industrial emissions and produce 130,000 tonnes of low-carbon methanol per year.
Celanese is actively leveraging CCU to offer low-carbon options across its Acetyl Chain and Engineered Materials products to help global customers meet the growing demand for more sustainable and circular solutions. The products will be launched under the ECO-CC name and be transparently supported through mass balance tracking and life cycle assessment processes.
“With this project, our Celanese value chain can convert CO2 waste into products for a wide array of end-markets, including consumer goods like adhesives, packaging, toys, paints, coatings and more.” said Mark Murray, senior vice president, Acetyls at Celanese. “Our globally-integrated value chain positions us to provide a wide range of solutions with carbon capture content across both our integrated Acetyl Chain as well as other methanol derived products like acetal copolymers (POM).”
CCU takes CO2 industrial emissions that would otherwise be emitted into the atmosphere from both Celanese and third-party sources and applies reduced-carbon-intensity hydrogen to chemically convert the captured CO2 into a methanol building block used for downstream production. This low-carbon input is then used to reduce traditional fossil fuel-based raw materials and can help produce a wide range of end products across most major industries. Third-party sources account for 80% of the captured CO2 waste.
Unlike the more commonly referenced carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), where captured CO2 emissions are injected into and stored in the ground, CCU fosters circularity by using CO2 emissions to create products that can reduce the need for fossil fuels.
The Clear Lake methanol unit was commissioned in October 2015 as a joint venture between Celanese and Mitsui & Co., Ltd. The unit utilises abundant, low-cost natural gas in the US Gulf Coast region as a feedstock. The joint venture operates as Fairway Methanol LLC, with both Celanese and Mitsui maintaining a 50/50 ownership.
