Advanced technology development reducing CO2 emissions

by
Dong Sup Kim,
SK energy Institute of Technology, Korea
e-mail: dongsupk@skenergy.com

Abstract
Responding

to

Korean

government

policies

on

green

growth

and

global

energy/environmental challenges, SK energy, the largest energy company in Korea, has been
developing new technologies to reduce CO2 emissions by 1) CO2 capture and utilization
(CCU), 2) efficiency improvement, and 3) Li-ion batteries. The paper introduces three
advanced technologies developed by SK energy; GreenPolTM Technology, ACOTM
Technology, and Li-ion battery. Contributing to company vision, more energy and less CO2,
the three technologies are characterized as follows. GreenPol utilizes CO2 as a feedstock for
making polymer. Advanced Catalytic Olefin (ACO) reduces CO2 emission by 20% and
increase olefin production by 17%. Li-ion Batteries for automotive industries improves CO2
emission.

Keywords: CO2 Capture and Utilization (CCU), Efficiency Improvement, Li-ion Batteries

1. Introduction
Energy & Environmental Challenges
The world faces energy and environmental challenges. There are obvious 3 hard truths
of which are already known. The first truth is energy demand will continue to increase in the
future. This demand will be driven by population growth, rapid economic growth in
developing countries, and their living standards. Another truth is, fossil fuel reserves are
dwindling, and getting harder to find. And the third, there are other environmental issues not
only CO2, but also land, water, etc.

To solve the problems resulted from the inconvenient truths international community
has started to take actions. As a result of the Copenhagen Climate conference 193
participating countries agreed to reduce green house gas emissions sufficiently to prevent
global temperature increases of no more than 2 degrees centigrade by 2020.
According to an article from UN, many countries announced their plans to reduce
CO2 emissions. SK energy, the largest energy company in Korea, has been developing new
technologies reducing CO2 emissions by CO2 capture and utilization (CCU), efficiency
improvement and Li-ion batteries. The Korean government is also working on a long-term
plan to reduce CO2 emissions by 30%
New Opportunities in Green Growth
World leading companies in private sector have responded to the government-led
initiatives and have been searching for new opportunities in green growth. In 2030, the
potential market size in green growth such as biofuel, water, wind, PV, CDM, etc. is
estimated at 7 trillion dollars. Huge rewards await the pioneers who succeed in Green
Industry.
For its part, the Korean government announced a five-year plan for green growth
starting last year. It calls for an investment of 85 billion dollars for developing 27 core
technologies into new growth engines. These green technologies will cover the following 5
sectors;
1) Clean Energy Sources: Solar cells, Evolutionary water reactor
2) High Efficiency: LED lighting, Batteries
3) Greening IndustrySpace: (P)HEV/EV, FCV, Eco-cities
4) Environmental Protection Resource Circulation: Climate change forecasting,
CCS
5) Zero-pollution Economic Activity: Convergence Contents
As a leading energy company in Korea, SK energy focused on 3 key areas: 1) expand
energy source: new and renewable energy including biofuel and solar etc. 2) increase energy
efficiency: invent new catalytic processes etc. 3) mitigate green house gas emission: battery
for electric vehicles, converting carbon dioxide into polymers.
In this paper, 3 advanced technologies are introduced, GreenPolTM Technology,
2

ACOTM Technology, and Li-ion battery.

GreenPolTM utilizes CO2 as a feedstock for making polymer. For this reason, SK
energy introduced a new concept CCU stands for carbon capture and utilization. Importantly,
the polymers made from CO2 offer several advantages over conventional polymers.
Advanced Catalytic Olefin (ACO) reduces CO2 emission by 20% and increase
olefin production by 17% (49% vs. 61%). Conventional olefin manufacturing technology is a
thermal cracking process which was developed 100 years ago. SK energy has developed is a
new process technology that cracks naphtha by means of a fluidized bed catalytic reaction.
One of biggest advantage of ACO technology in the aspect of green growth is to increase
energy efficiency. ACO technology uses a simple, single reactor as compared to the
conventional thermal-cracking process that uses a multi-furnace, and with low-temperature
operation to reduce investment and energy consumption.
Li-ion Batteries for automotive industries improves CO2 emission. More than half of
the worlds oil production is used by the transportation sector and an estimated 21% of
greenhouse gases released from the Earth are produced from transportation. SK energy has
developed advanced Li-ion Batteries for next-generation vehicles such as HEVs (hybrid
electric vehicles), PHEVs (plug-in HEVs), and EVs (electric vehicles).

2. Progress of Technical Development

GreenPolTM Technology
A popular phrase nowadays is sustainable development. The term refers to
development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future
generating to meet their own needs.
In general, a great deal of CO2 is produced which during the plastic production from
hydrocarbon. SK energy developed a new catalytic process which utilizes CO2 for making
plastics/polymers. CO2 cannot be directly converted to a polymer, but can yield polymer
when combined with certain epoxides including ethylene oxide, propylene oxide, and
cyclohexeneoxide etc.
3

GreenPolTM technology which is an alternating copolymer of CO2 and epoxide has

characteristics of low petroleum dependency (44% CO2), enzyme degradable, clean burning,
adherence to cellulose substrates and transparency.1

Figure1. Chemical reaction mechanism of GreenPolTM technology

As shown in the figure 1 above, a suitable catalyst must be required in order to
combine CO2 and epoxide to produce a polymer. A candidate catalyst was first discovered in
1969 at the Tokyo Institute of Technology,2 and others researchers introduced processes and
catalysts to produce CO2 polymers. However, the previous developments have limitations for
commercial utilization. SK energy has developed a dual functional catalyst based on Cobalt
metal, which can produce the copolymer with much higher efficiency than any other existing
catalysts.3 Our dual functional catalyst shows high activity even at low cat./monomer ratio
and the polymerization process can be efficiently operate at higher temperatures (60-75 C).
For the commercialization of polymers, introduction of continuous polymerization
process is critical. SK energys engineering and processing teams successfully developed a
continuous process for the production of CO2 based polymers. The schematic diagram of SK
energys continuous polymerization process is as shown in below Figure 2

Figure 2. Schematic Diagram of SK energys Continuous Polymerization Process

GreenPol, CO2-epoxide polymer, is attractive and promising in many aspects.
GreenPol, SK-CO2-propylene oxide polymer contains 44 percent of CO2 by weight. This is a
way to utilize CO2 as a feed for producing polymers. Propylenediol has been approved by the
United States Food and Drug Administration as a food additive. GreenPol burns gently in air
(as gently as wood or alcohol) without emission of toxic fumes or ash residue, which makes
disposal by incineration practical and safe. Furthermore, it has potential as a food packaging
material. It shows superior optical properties (transparency), which is enhancing its
application in food packaging. This CO2 based polymer shows excellent barrier properties
towards O2 and H2O, which is comparable to Nylon and EVOH (ethylene vinyl alcohol). The
adhesive property is good, allowing use with other materials. One disadvantage is a weak
thermal property and low glass transition temperature. It also starts to decompose at 180
degrees Celsius, which may limit its use. These limitations can be overcome by changing the
epoxides and /or introducing terpolymerization process, which will help to control the glass
transition temperatures, thermal properties and other polymer properties.

ACO Technology
The basic materials of the chemical industry such as ethylene and propylene are being
produced in the steam cracking process.4 One of the fastest growing petrochemical markets is
that for propylene, driven primarily by the high growth rate of polypropylene.5 Therefore,
various propylene technologies are investigated such as propane dehydrogenation, metathesis,
MTO/MTP, Olefin cracking but steam cracking process has been most widely utilized.
However, the steam cracking process has several drawbacks such as the high temperature
required for the cracking reaction, the deposition of coke in the tubes, and the relatively low
selectivity in ethylene from heavy feeds.6 To solve these drawbacks catalytic cracking
method has been studied.4,6,8~13 These studies include utilizing a packed bed. The packed bed
reactor suffers from coking. SK energy utilized a circulating fluidized bed and it is a
continuous process because of because of regenerating catalyst continuously. This is the
ACO (Advanced Catalytic Olefins) process (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Typical ACO reactor flow scheme

The ACO process produces both polymer grade ethylene and propylene. Much of the
process flow scheme is in line with typical olefins plant recovery, however, there are some
unique features. For example, the amount of acetylene can be almost two orders of magnitude
6

lower than a typical cracker. Further, there are trace impurities such as nitrogen oxides,
oxygen, and other trace impurities that must be removed. These and other issues are
addressed in the ACO process flow scheme, which feature front end depropanizer (Figure 4).

Figure 4. Typical ACO recovery flow scheme

The combination of a robust and selective catalyst, coupled with the optimized design
from the orthoflow converter give quite a flexible ACO process. The ACO provides 10-20%
higher yields than that of steam cracking. Further, the C4-C6 non-aromatic portion can be
recycled directly to the reactor.
With the recycle of the C4-C6 non-aromatic hydrocarbons back to the reactor, the
only other byproducts form the ACO process are tail gas and gasoline. There is no
appreciable fuel oil made with the ACO process. Figure 5 gives a comparative analysis of the
overall product yield structure from a steam cracker and the ACO process for light straight
run (LSR) naphtha.

Figure 5. Steam cracker and ACO yields

The ACO process makes about 15-25% more ethylene plus propylene on a relative
basis, depending on the operating conditions. In the example above, the total ethylene plus
propylene yield is about 17% higher than a steam cracker. Although the total amount of
gasoline is lower in the ACO case, it has a higher concentration of BTX. In fact, the BTX is
about 20-25% higher in the ACO process.
Typically, the ACO process operates 200 lower than thermal cracking process
which operates at about 850. The energy and CO2 reduction due to lower operating
temperature and high efficiency is significant. If the ACO process fully replaces conventional
ethylene cracker using naphtha as a feedstock replaced it could save 18 million tons of CO2
per year. (Assumption: world ethylene production is 130 million tons)

Batteries for Electric Drive Vehicles

Automotive electrification began with hybrids, but world is moving fast toward
electric drive vehicles (EVD). A key factor in the development of these vehicles is battery
technology. If the engine is the heart of todays breed of automobiles, then batteries will
become the heart in the future.

Lithium-ion batteries involve the four key technologies: the battery management
system, cell and package design, separator, and electrodes. We are developing and planning to
produce all of these technologies for EDV Applications. (Figure 6)
1) Battery Management System
As the many cells in a pack tend to behave differently, its very important to monitor
the status of each cell and bring them to an even condition, which is typically done by
Battery Management System (BMS). WE have developed highly accurate and
effective algorithms for predicting each cells status. We also have developed high
performance cell balancing logic. Based on these technologies, SOC of the battery
pack is controlled within 5% error range.
We have replaced Photo-MOS with ASIC chip for signal sensing/processing device in
BMS. As a result, BMS volume has been halved, sensing speed increased by 10 times,
and balancing current increased by 30%. Cost is estimated to be halved
2) Cell and Pack Design
SK energys battery cells are distinguished from other competitors by 1) high energy
and power densities as shown in Figure 3, and 2) excellent safety.
We have developed battery packs for various applications, from the compact-sized
strong HEVs, the PHEVs with the electric drive ranges of 10 and 20 miles to the full
speed EVs with the electric drive ranges up to 90 miles on one charge.
3) Separator
SK energy has the unique position that produced separator for the battery. SK energy
has also developed ceramic coated separator to improve safety at high temperature.

Figure 6. SKs product line-up

Further studies are being conducted to improve safety and reliability, and to develop massproduction technologies. Testing is also under way in conjunction with major domestic and
overseas automakers. Figure 7 shows a comparison of energy density & power density
[AABC2005, The 48th Battery Symposium in Japan]

Figure 7. Comparison of Energy/power density [AABC2005, The 48th Battery Symposium in

Japan]

10

Based on these technologies, SK energy will enlarge development areas such as UPS
(Uninterrupted Power Supply), Smart Grid and renewable energy storage system, such as
wind and solar power storage.

3. Conclusion
As energy & environmental challenges become more severe, the business opportunity
from green growth also gets bigger. The way we produce and use energy today is not
sustainable any more.
For that reason, nations around the world are increasingly involved in green
technology development. This global effort must be continued to (1) develop new/renewable
energy, (2) conserve energy and use it most efficiently, and (3) reduce GHG emissions. SK
energy performs various R&BD (research and business development) in order to achieve
vision of more energy and less CO2. As stated, CO2 is used as raw material of polymer. The
CO2 polymer, GreenPol, provides a new challenge of CCI- carbon capture and utilizations.
ACO technology utilizing fluidized catalytic cracking at a lower temperature, compared to
thermal naphtha cracking will provided reduction of CO2 emissions and energy consumption.
EDVs(Electric Drive Vehicles), new methods for powering motor vehicles make to use our
limited oil resources efficiently.
To begin with, technology breakthroughs are needed to make green growth
technically feasible and economically viable. This will require an unwavering commitment to
R&D. For the short-term at least, the private and public sectors also need to work together to
accelerate green growth, we believe.
In this regard, Korea is an example moving toward green growth. Korean government
leads a private company providing with visions and policies for green growth while private
company like SK energy follows it with green technology development. In order to speed up
success in green growth industry, global cooperation between countries including both
private and public sectors is required in technology and business aspects.

11

[The End]

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The author acknowledges a help from colleagues; Mr. Sun Choi, Dr. MyungAhn Ok, Mr.
Chanho Moon.

REFERENCES

(1) (a)D. J. Darensbourg Chem. Rev. 2007, 107, 2388; (b) G. W. Coates, D. R. Moore
Angew, Chem. Int. Ed. 2004, 43, 6618
(2) S. Inoue, H. Koinuma, T. Tsuruta J. poly. Sci. Part B 1969, 7, 287
(3) Sujith S., Jae Ki Min, Joung Eon Seong, Bun Yeoul Lee Angew, Chem. Int. Ed. 2008,
47, 7306
(4) S.M. Jeong, J.H. Chae, J.-H. Kang, S.H. Lee, W.-H. Lee, Catalytic pyrolysis of
naphtha on the KVO3-base catalyst, Catalyst Today, 74(2002), 257-264.
(5) P.K. Ladwig, J.E. Asplin, G.F. Stuntz, W.A. Wachter, B.E. Henry, Process for
selectively producing light olefins in a fluid catalytic cracking process, US Patent
6,069,287 (2000)
(6) X. Zhu, S. Liu, Y. Song, S. XIe, L. Xu, Catalytic cracking of 1-butene to propene
and ethane on MCM-22 zeolite, Applied Catalysis, 290(2005), 191-199.
(7) Ethylene via catalytic naphtha cracking, 96/97S12, PERP Report
(8) D. Ji, B. Wang, G. Qian, Q. Gao, G. Lu, L. Yan, J. Suo, A highly efficient catalytic
C4 alkane cracking over zeolite ZSM-23, Catalyst Communications, 6(2005), 297300.
(9) K. K. Pant, D. Kunzru, Catalytic pyrolysis of n-heptanes on unpromoted and
potassium promoted calcium aluminates, Chemical Engineering Journal, 87(2002),
219-225.
(10) S. M, Jeong, Y. C. Byun, J. H. Chae, W. -H. Lee, Coke formation on the surface of
-Al2O3 in the catalytic pyrolysis of naphtha, Korean J. Chem. Eng., 18(2001), 842847.
(11) L. Li, J. Gao, X. Meng, Reaction behaviors and mechanisms of catalytic pyrolysis
of C4 hydrocarbons, Chemical Engineering Journal, 116(2006), 155-161.

12

(12) X. Meng, C, Xu, J. Gao, L. Li, Studies on catalytic pyrolysis of heavy oil: reaction
behaviors and mechanistic pathways, Applied Catalysis A, 294(2005), 168-176.
(13) X. Meng, C, Xu, J. Gao, Z. Liu, Influence of feed properties and reaction conditions
on catalytic pyrolysis of gas oils and heavy oils, Fuel, 87(2008), 2463-2468.
(14) AABC2005, The 48th Battery Symposium in Japan

13