Source: European Investment Bank
While most of the graphite used in industry today is synthetic graphite imported from China, UP Catalyst’s synthetic graphite offers some important advantages. For a start, whereas most synthetic graphite is made from heating petroleum industry biproducts to high temperature and therefore entail high CO2 emissions, UP Catalyst gets its CO2 from biogas and its electricity from renewable sources in a process that is overall carbon negative.
“Typically, synthetic graphite is a very carbon intensive product, which is basically made from petroleum refinery residues,” explains Jonas Wolff, a senior advisor at the European Investment Bank. “But because UP Catalyst is using CO2 emissions from biofuels, they are effectively taking CO2 out of circulation and permanently sequestrating its carbon, which is hugely beneficial, in terms of our climate objectives.”
Another positive aspect of UP Catalyst’s process is that it could help the European Union to reduce its dependence on graphite imports from China, which currently supplies about 95% of the material. Recognising the potential of the technology, the company’s project that plans to turn a quarter of a million tons of CO2 into graphite was recently listed as one of 47 Strategic Projects for critical raw materials by the European Commission, a designation that means it will benefit from coordinated support by the Commission, Member States and financial institutions as well as streamlined permitting provisions.