OCOchem (Richland, Wash.) announced production partnership agreement with ADM Co. (Chicago) to build a groundbreaking field demonstration plant using OCOchem’s Carbon FluX Electrolyzer technology. The plant will be co-located within ADM’s corn processing complex in Decatur, Illinois. It will convert biogenic CO2 from ADM’s ethanol production stream to formate molecules, which can be used in a wide variety of consumer and industrial products and applications.
“The partnership with ADM will help enable OCOchem to bring our CO2 Electrolysis process to a commercial scale and start meeting early customer demand for our carbon-negative, biogenic, sustainable formate products at competitive market prices,” said Todd Brix, Co-Founder and CEO of OCOchem.
“We’re pleased to work with OCOchem to advance a high-potential pathway for converting captured CO2 into valuable, carbon-negative molecules,” said Kris Lutt, President of Sustainable Materials and Strategic Initiatives at ADM. “OCOchem has rapidly scaled an impressive CO2 conversion technology that aligns with ADM’s strategy to lead in industrial carbon management and sustainable molecule production. This collaboration represents a strategic step in demonstrating how CO2-derived formates can emerge as cost-competitive, next-generation C1 platform chemical — supporting lower-carbon supply chains and unlocking new value across the bio-based economy.”
CO2 is the most abundant and readily available form of carbon for making organic molecules. Plants have been engaged in this process for an estimated 2.5 billion years. OCOchem’s technology now makes it cost-effective to convert captured CO2 into carbon-negative organic molecules directly using the highly efficient CO2 electrolysis technologies OCOchem has pioneered.
Under the terms of the agreement, OCOchem will build, deploy, and operate modular Carbon FluX electrolyzer systems in an existing facility at the ADM site, converting water and CO2 captured from the bioethanol plant into carbon-negative formate molecules to replace existing fossil fuel-based formates and derivatives. Plant construction is expected to commence later this year and is scheduled for completion by the end of 2026.
The companies also plan to collaborate on value chain development for formate molecules and derivatives such as formic acid, potassium formate, and ethyl formate. These will target a range of existing and emerging applications, including crop protection, biomass upgrading, fertilizers, water treatment, liquid syngas carriers, industrial solvents, cleaning products, metal recovery, de-icing chemicals, active pharmaceutical ingredients, and flavors and fragrances.
Adds Brix: “As one of the few scaled out modular CO2 conversion facilities in the world, OCOchem’s Carbon FluX Electrolyzer will also demonstrate the economic and technical feasibility to convert large volumes of captured CO2 emissions into value-added liquid organic molecules. This will happen on-site in an existing manufacturing environment, and establish a new, fast, and modular approach to industrial symbiosis, using the most abundant waste product on the planet, CO2, as feedstock.”
By numbering up the world’s largest gas diffusion electrode and first-of-a-kind co-current cell design into multiple cell stacks, OCOchem’s Carbon FluX Electrolyzer converts CO2 and water into vital end-user and intermediate formate molecules and derivatives that have traditionally been made from fossil fuels. By utilizing biogenic CO2 as a feedstock and clean energy, all products are carbon negative. The core use of electrochemical processing technologies, utilizing the world’s largest CO2 electrolyzer cells measuring 1.5 m² in surface area and operating at high current densities, enables high Faradaic efficiency, high cell productivity, 100% product selectivity, and hence no waste products.
Since opening its lab in 2020, OCOchem has scaled its gas diffusion electrode-based Carbon FluX Electrolyzer cell by a factor 1500x and quadrupled its performance to make both the world’s largest and highest performance CO2 Electrolyzer Cell. Early support for OCOchem was provided by the US Army Research Office, the US Department of Energy and ARPA-E. OCOchem recently announced the completion of a multi-cell stack pilot plant at its R&D facility in Richland, WA.