Orion S.A., a leading global producer of furnace and specialty carbon blacks, is investing €12.8 million to further develop and demonstrate a climate-neutral process for producing carbon black from alternative carbon sources, the company announced today. Half of the new project's funding, or €6.4 million, is being provided by the German government's Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Action along with the European Union's NextGenerationEU fund. The project is called the Clean Carbon Black Research and Development Project and will be based in a new research facility being built at Orion's main innovation center at its plant in Cologne, Germany.
The technology is designed to improve Orion’s yield and throughput in the production of carbon black using circular feedstocks and thus potentially reduce the carbon footprint of the process by a significant amount. This could accelerate the shift to a circular economy and feed the growing demand for sustainable materials in the tire industry, according to the company. “The Clean Carbon Black Research and Development Project’s aim will be to develop ways to reduce the carbon footprint and improve the yield and throughput, potentially lowering the cost of the material," Orion’s CEO Corning Painter said in the press release. "Technological breakthroughs in this increasingly important field could have significant ramifications for energy integration and the molecular recycling of tires.”