EvoCarbon: Sustainable catalytic methodology for carboxylic acids using CO2 as feedstock.

Carboxylic acids are critical substrates in industries like pharmaceuticals, food, textiles, fertilizers, polymers, and coatings, with a projected global market of $30.8 billion by 2031\. Currently, their production relies heavily on petrochemical feedstocks, requiring high energy inputs and resulting in substantial carbon footprints. While CO2 capture technology is available, industrial applications that effectively valorise CO2 remain limited. EvoCarbon is a new catalytic process that addresses these challenges by converting CO2 into low-carbon-footprint carboxylic acids using a new generation of bio-based solvents. Some of the unique features of EvoCarbon are product flexibility (aliphatic and aromatic carboxylates), exceptional functional group tolerance, short reaction times (seconds to minutes), mild operating conditions, simple and cost-effective product isolation, and solvent/catalyst reuse.After completion of this project, we will deliver the first standardised chemical process for producing multiple carboxylic acids from CO2, ready to scale to meet critical industry needs while reducing the environmental impact of carboxylate production and enabling new industrially relevant methods to utilise CO2\.