Citroniq, a Houston-based maker of carbon-negative materials, announced it raised $12 million in series A funding.
The financing was co-funded by Lummus Technology, which last year announced plans to build four bio-based polypropylene (PP) plants in the United States in partnership with Citroniq.
The funding is expected to enable Citroniq to further advance the planning, design, and construction of its first ‘green PP’ plant in the US state of Nebraska.
"Since we announced the partnership between Lummus and Citroniq last year, we have made significant progress toward our shared goals of scaling and commercialising bio-polypropylene production processes," said Leon de Bruyn, President and Chief Executive Officer, Lummus Technology. "Lummus' latest investment in Citroniq builds on this progress and strengthens our partnership, working together to lower carbon emissions in the plastics industry."
The plant will employ the Verdene PP suite of four technologies developed by Lummus: ethanol to ethylene technology, dimer technology, olefins conversion technology and polypropylene technology.
Lummus says it is the only technology provider able to supply all the proven, low-energy technologies to produce renewable green PP from biogenic ethanol.
The Nebraska plant is scheduled for completion in 2027 and is expected to produce 400,000 tonnes of bio-polypropylene a year, which would make it the first plant in North America with this level of production capacity.
Citroniq says the plant would capture and avoid 2 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per year.