Celanese Corp., a Dallas-based specialty materials and chemicals producer, and Röchling Industrial, a Mannheim, Germany-based plastics processor, announced Nov. 2 a collaboration to use polyoxymethylene (POM) manufactured with carbon capture and utilization (CCU)-based feedstocks in selected stock-shape applications. Röchling has procured the material from Celanese for use in its products.

The POM incorporates chemical building blocks derived from captured carbon dioxide through a mass-balance approach. Celanese said its process uses CCU-derived feedstocks to manufacture POM while maintaining properties such as rigidity, dimensional stability, sliding performance and wear resistance. The companies said the material can be incorporated without changes to established product designs or processing operations.

The collaboration draws on Celanese's existing carbon capture and utilization operations at its Clear Lake, Texas, facility, where captured CO₂ emissions are converted into low-carbon methanol. Celanese identifies this methanol as a feedstock for its POM ECO-C products, which are manufactured downstream at separate production facilities, including sites in Frankfurt, Germany, and Bishop, Texas. The company uses a mass-balance approach to account for the incorporation of CCU-derived feedstocks into its products.

Why it Matters

The collaboration illustrates one way chemical manufacturers are incorporating captured carbon into existing production chains as an alternative to fossil-derived feedstocks. Rather than requiring physical separation of every alternative and conventional feedstock, mass-balance accounting tracks the quantities and associated sustainability characteristics through production.

Under ISCC's mass-balance framework, alternative and conventional materials can be physically mixed, but their sustainability attributes must remain separately documented. The amount of certified material assigned to finished products cannot exceed the amount of qualifying feedstock entering the system.

The companies did not disclose the volume of POM involved in the collaboration or a quantified reduction in the finished polymer's product carbon footprint.