Interview: Dow working towards a low-carbon economy

As a global synthetic rubber supplier, Dow is focused on developing technologies that minimise the environmental footprint of its EPDM and polyolefin-based elastomers portfolio, while also enhancing the performance of these materials.

In the area of sustainability, the direction-of-travel is being largely determined by OE customers, the capabilities of rubber formulators and Dow’s own ability to reduce end-product carbon-emissions at the feedstock and polymerisation stages.

At the polymer production end, the petrochemicals major has delivered significant process efficiencies through developments around its ‘advanced molecular catalyst’ (AMC) technology.

“In our large-output plants, this catalyst gives us a high yield and low energy-consumption, so we can produce polymers with a much lower carbon footprint,” said Dow marketing manager Dr Olaf Henschke.

For instance, he said, Dow has carried out a life cycle study comparing traditionally produced Ziegler-Natta EPDMs and found that CO2 emissions were 39% lower for material produced via itslatest process technology.

“So, as a customer, you can lower the carbon footprint of an EPDM compound formulation with Nordel EPDM, without changing anything in the formulation,” said Henschke.

AMC catalysis, he added, can yield polymers with more linear chains, tailored long-chain branching and/or higher diene content for improvements in areas such as processing, curing and end-use performance. These enhancements can also further reduce carbon emissions during EPDM compound production.

Noting that the automotive industry, for example, has just 17 years to meet targets to be carbon-neutral, Henschke said suppliers such as Dow also need to work further on decarbonising their production facilities.

“This is one way to cut a lot of the CO2 emissions,” said Henschke. “We think we can reduce CO2 emissions of our production by about 35% through electrification of crackers....

Read the full interview in the September/October issue of European Rubber Journal magazine>