E2C
Electrons to high value Chemical products
Priority Axis
Technological and Social InnovationSpecific objective
Technological Innovation
Lead partner
Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific ResearchContact
Begindatum
01/07/2018Einddatum
30/06/2022Project budget
7 184 812 €ERDF amount
4 310 887 €ERDF rate
60%Over
Common challenge
The coastal areas of the 2 Seas region combine (future) availability of renewable energy with strong industrial activity. This leads to the common challenge of handling renewable energy surpluses, diversifying feedstocks in the chemical industry, reducing greenhouse gas emissions in energy intensive industry, and meeting societal and regulatory demands on advanced fuels and sustainable chemicals. "Power-to-X” concepts, using (renewable) electricity as a replacement for oil and gas energy sources in the production of chemical products, allow for the combination of a solution to these challenges with the creation of valuable products. However, several technical and economic hurdles still need to be overcome. These are related to the cost of renewable hydrogen, the technological immaturity of novel electrochemical processes, and the need for demonstrators and business case calculations to convince industry to invest in further development and implementation of these technologies.
Overall objective
Main outputs
Cross border approach
Main Achievements
The E2C project has advanced in 2020 at a different pace than planned, mainly due to the travel restrictions and lockdowns throughout the year becuase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Under these conditions, the project partners have showed a high degree of flexibility and creativity in their work which kept the project advancing.
In spite of the difficult situation, the project achieved important results and progress was made in the course of the year on different aspects:
- technology: the developement of new materials, the design and construction of setups with unique functionality
- communication: stakeholder events and observer partner events were organized online and generated large interest (more than 70 participants), newsletters published
- dissemination: several peer reviewed papers have been published in 2020 containing the results of the project, dissemination of the results through the Voltachem community
- cooperation within the project: the partners are codeveloping technologies and projects and cooperations are defined beyond the project.
The project achieved important results in 2020, moving the P-to-X technologies beyond the state of the art in both the direct electrolysis of CO2 through the cooperation between University of Antewrp, TNO, VITO and Delft University of Technology as well as in the water electrolysis through the cooperation between TNO, University of Exeter and Lille University. The advancement of the SEDMES technology was a concerted efforted mainly between TNO and Lille University. A sophisicated predictive model for electrolysis was created as a result of the project by Lille University with input from the rest of the project partners and it will be validated in the coming period. The engagement of the external stakeholders through communication events was coordinated by The University of Sheffield and TNO. Delft University of Technology together with TNO have developed business case analysis for the technologies in E2C under different scenarios.