Production of advanced chemicals from biogenic CO2 emissions for bio-based circular economy.

Anthropogenic CO2 emissions are one of the main causes of the climate crisis. The majority of these emissions come from the combustion of fossil fuels. Bio-based industries, short BBI use biological raw materials instead of fossil fuels to generate energy and to produce bio-based chemicals and materials. While BBIs also emit CO2, they can also use this CO2 as a feedstock for the production of bio-based chemicals.

The aim of CO2SMOS is to develop a flexible toolbox. This will consist of various technologies that can be used to convert CO2 into biobased chemicals. These chemicals are the basis for bio-based products such as packaging, coatings, biodegradable plastics and high-performance biopolymers. CO2SMOS implements the circular economy approach, contributing to the zero-waste goal and the avoidance of greenhouse gases. It can also reduce dependence on fossil fuels and strengthen the BBI industry. This will create new jobs.

In the CO2SMOS project, the Chair of Communication Science, short COMM, is determining how the public perceives biobased products and what the requirements are for these products. COMM is also part of an integrative life cycle assessment, short LCA. To investigate perceptions and requirements, COMM draws on its expertise in qualitative, quantitative and statistical methods. First, influencing factors are explored using qualitative methods. Then, these factors are quantified in a cross-national online survey. Finally, the data is used to cluster the different requirements and to model different consumer profiles and cluster consumers into groups. From this, COMM can derive recommendations for target group-specific communication and product design strategies.