“With this newly developed process we want to give operators the chance to put their process gases to good use and increase the productivity of their plants,” said Holger Thielert, head of ThyssenKrupp Industrial Solutions’ gas treatment plant department.  
“For this we have developed and patented a process that converts coke oven gases into valuable materials in an eco-friendly way. We can market this process worldwide and also retrofit it in existing plants.”

Through a complex process, coke oven gas is scrubbed and carbon dioxide is added, yielding ammonium bicarbonate. The compound can be used in nitrogen fertilizers or as propellants and foaming agents for plastics or porous ceramics. It also has uses in the food industry as a type of baking soda.

The company said that initial results have so far been promising.  

“We are able to utilize 95 percent of the ammonia contained in the coke oven gas. Every hour the process produces 15 kilograms of solid materials from 15 cubic meters of coke oven gas and two cubic meters of carbon dioxide,” said Sebastian Riethof, a Berlin Technical University scientist.

Given those outputs, the chemical products can be manufactured competitively, the company said.

Peter Liszio, the coke plant’s managing director, said that almost all of the plant’s process gas already is being recycled. But if the pilot facility proves to be successful, it would be a breakthrough in productivity and resource efficiency.

“If we can now manage on a long-term basis not only to produce marketable products from the coke oven gases for other sectors but also to reduce the CO₂ emissions of the mill, that would be real value added with great environmental benefits,” he said.