(Reuters) – Poland’s biggest refiner PKN Orlen is exploring ways to produce polymers using carbon dioxide, its director of innovation and new technology development Arkadiusz Majoch said on Thursday.
New technology to capture, store, reuse or replace carbon pollution is being explored around the world, with some companies working on methods of converting the greenhouse gas into products such as plastic, soap or fabric.
“Right now we are finishing some research in the laboratory and already we started purchasing pilot plans where CO2 will be the raw material…and at the end we are expecting to have some polymers,” Majoch told a panel during a conference on carbon capture and utilisation (CCU).
He said Orlen had a budget of more than two billion zlotys ($509.2 million) to spend over the next nine years on developing and implementing technology across the group’s companies, and was looking to implement the results of the polymer pilot at one of them, possibly in Plock in central Poland.
All of the group’s more than 500 projects qualified as decarbonisation or related to decarbonisation, with some “strictly dedicated” to CCU, Majoch added when asked how much of the budget would be ringfenced for CCU.
Under its 2030 strategy, Orlen plans to reduce CO2 emissions from existing refining and petrochemical assets by 20% and by 33% from its power generation business. It has also set a 2050 target date for achieving a net zero carbon footprint.
($1 = 3.9280 zlotys)
(Reporting by Karol Badohal; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)
