In a world grappling with the urgent need to address climate change, a seemingly relentless addiction to oil remains a significant roadblock. Fossil fuels, particularly oil, continue to dominate the global energy landscape, contributing substantially to greenhouse gas emissions. 

But it is not just for energy, oil is used in a massive variety of products. To ween the world off oil, we will need an alternative, not just for energy but also an alternative for making materials and one company is working to make that alternative. Not just a carbon neutral alternative but one that is carbon negative.

Origin Materials, founded in 2008, embarked on a mission to create plant-based materials that are chemically identical to their fossil fuel-based counterparts but also carbon negative. 

John Bisell and his co-founder Ryan Smith came up with the idea for Origin Materials when they were undergraduate chemical engineers.

“While the transportation sector is a major culprit, responsible for over half of the world’s oil consumption, it’s essential to recognise that oil plays a role in nearly every facet of our lives. It’s not just about fuelling cars; it’s also involved in the manufacturing of countless products, from health and beauty items to medical devices, pharmaceuticals, textiles, and plastics.” Bisell explains

Creating Plastics from Plants

The company’s journey began by focusing on wood chips, a readily available waste product from lumber yards. While wood chips were chosen for their ease of access and transport, Origin Materials emphasises that almost any plant with cellulose and hemicellulose can be used in their process.

The heart of Origin Materials’ innovation lies in the chemical transformation of plant matter into intermediates that can be turned into plastics. Turning the intermediates to plastics is the easy part, and is something that is already done across the materials industry. 

The process involves turning wood chips into chloromethylfurfural (CMF) and hydrothermal carbon (HTC).

Bisell explains the process, “It’s maybe roughly analogous to Kraft pulping, which basically means we’re taking the size reduced wood, we’re throwing it in a liquid phase reactor. That liquid phase reactor is a biphasic reactor, so there’s an organic phase and an aqueous phase. And it’s dissolving the cellulose and the Hemicellulose off of the wood chips because that’s the reagent for production of CMF, chloromethylfurfural.”

What remains unreacted in this process is the lignin of the wood chips. Lignin is an organic polymer found in plants that helps with the formation and strengthening of cell walls. This remains in the aqueous phase and is turned into the HTC.

CMF and HTC serve as the building blocks for a wide range of materials, and this innovative approach allows Origin Materials to create products that are not just identical to their petroleum-based counterparts but, more importantly, carbon negative.

Towards a Greener Materials Future

CMF and HTC can be turned into chemicals used in many commercial applications. The first compound Origin Materials made was para-xylene which is a chemical used to create PTA and PET.

This process takes a few steps, first turning the CMF into 5-methyl furfural via hydrodechlorination, converting that to dimethylfuran or DMF, which then is turned into para-xylene, or PX, which can then be used in already existing and well scaled systems to produce chemically identical PET.

Creating chemically identical compounds is important for Origin Materials plans to scale up quickly. Companies can take their existing production or packaging processes and simply swap out their fossil fuel based PET and replace it with Origin Materials carbon negative PET without making any other changes.

Bisell explains, “We didn’t want to have to take significant amounts of product risk. At the same time, we were taking process risk. And so it’s a simplified sort of the go to market strategy and technology scale up. And so we thought, you know, para-xylene, an existing product with a very large market, was the way that we could drag our platform to scale.”

As Origin Materials gears up to provide sustainable alternatives to conventional materials, the potential for transformation is vast. Their materials hold several advantages, including decoupling from volatile oil prices and the potential to develop improved versions of existing polymers with enhanced properties like strength and elasticity.

For instance, one notable application they are exploring is the replacement of multi-layer barrier films used in packaging. These films prevent the ingress of gases like oxygen, which can spoil perishable goods, but means the packaging is recyclable. By producing a high-performance, mono-material with excellent barrier properties, Origin Materials aims to make a significant impact on reducing waste and increasing recyclability.

“One of the products that we can make PDF from our materials that you can’t really make from petroleum or fossil based materials, at least not very effectively, has quite good barrier properties as a mono material. So without layering and in between all these other things. It acts basically like PET but with a much better barrier for co2, oxygen and water. And so, you know, that’s an opportunity to replace existing multi layer barrier films with a polyester material that is, you know, renewable content, lower carbon footprint and is actually recyclable, unlike the existing multi layer barrier films that are out there.” says Bisell

However, creating materials with new properties is a massive challenge for Origin Materials, as understanding the needs of every company. “ The reality is there are tens of thousands of different applications for different products in the world. And chemicals interact with each of those applications differently. Sometimes in very surprising ways. And nobody could be an expert on every single one of those applications. No company can have an expert on every single one of those applications. And so that makes it quite an interesting challenge. It also keeps it very, very interesting for all of us. We really enjoy it because we get to learn about new applications all the time.” Bisell says.

Scaling Up

While Origin Materials has made significant strides in developing its technology, the challenge of scaling up remains. “So the rule of thumb in the chemical industry, particularly scaling in the chemical industry, is that chemistry works and physics fails when you scale up.” says Bisell.

The Origin 1 demonstration plant, which was completed in June 2023, marks a critical milestone in their journey, but they are already planning for Origin 2 and 3, which will operate on an even larger scale and fulfil orders for clients.

Scaling up in the chemical industry is a complex endeavour, with challenges ranging from managing suspended solids in liquid processes to handling solids efficiently. These scaling steps are crucial to ensuring that the process works seamlessly at a commercial scale.

The Carbon-Negative Promise

Origin Materials has had a full life cycle carbon analysis conducted by Deloitte, to back up the claim that their materials are carbon negative. Carbon negative means that the carbon footprint of their products, from feedstock to production, is offset by the carbon sequestration capacity of the feedstock itself.

The numbers from the full life cycle carbon assessment are based on what a typical Oringi Materials plant will look like, however this is just an estimation. Bisell explains “Now, of course, there probably is no such thing as a typical plant. This is sort of a fiction, a shared fiction, amongst a lot of these different technologies, you know, a plant in one place in the United States might have a particular emissions profile, because of the energy it’s consuming, and the provenance of that energy, you know, in a different spot, it will have a different one, as just as a consequence of what’s connected to the grid there. And so, on a plant by plant basis, we’ll have to go back and see, well, well, how did we actually perform on that individual plant, but what we try to do right now is say, what do we think is a reasonable estimation of a typical plant using our technology.”

The analysis found that for the production of CMF the carbon uptake of the feedstock during its lifetime is larger than the carbon released during production, this means for every kilogram of CMF produced, 1.2 kg of carbon is saved. For HTC is -1.67 kg of CO2 per kg of HTC produced.

There is one factor that may change as the Origin Materials process is scaled up around the world, and that is the feedstock. The numbers in the full life cycle assessment are based on sustainably grown American softwood. However the best feedstock to use may change from location to location.

Bisell explains, “What does change from feedstock to feedstock quite substantially is the cost of the feedstock as delivered. So some feedstocks are more difficult to collect, you can’t get as much in a, you know, given radius. If you look at North America versus East Asia versus Southeast Asia. There are different feedstocks that are interesting in each of those areas, you know, it’s not always the same all the way across. So we think that’ll be an interesting opportunity as we go.”

Origin Materials is pioneering a revolution in sustainable materials, offering chemically identical yet carbon-negative alternatives to petroleum-based materials. BIsell believes that the full addressable market for their materials is over $1 trillion. Ranging from textiles, plastics and packaging to car parts, toys and tyres. 

Their commitment to innovation and collaboration is poised to disrupt the materials industry and drive us toward a greener, more sustainable future, where every product we use has a reduced carbon footprint. As they continue to scale up their operations, the potential impact of their work on the fight against climate change could be immense.