Project Overview

The research and training program of the TUW-DK CO₂Refinery covers a wide range of methods and will integrate multiple disciplines required to implement a fully functional facility for refining and upgrading CO₂ on a technical center scale. The future “one carbon engineers” will work together on the development of technologies to efficiently utilize CO₂ as a carbon source to make a broad variety of products using chemical and biological catalysts. In addition to synthesis of products from CO₂, CO₂Refinery will focus on activation of CO₂ for utilization as a carbon source in synthesis processes. Moreover, using renewable resources such as biomass and energy, energy storage with CO₂as the scaffold will be investigated.

The strategy of CO₂Refinery is complemented by research on systems engineering, modelling, and analysis to provide the framework of the individual unit operations. Additionally, life cycle analysis will be used as a powerful tool to evaluate performance of the refinery on an economic scale. Within the proposed research framework, the members of the TUW-DK will be trained interdisciplinary to obtain a unique skillset. Graduates from the TUW-DK CO₂Refinery are envisioned to work at the forefront of groundbreaking research, but also to implement the concepts and ideas of a CO₂ refinery in industry.