Citroniq is a business which is a Houston-based maker of carbon-negative materials and recently they announced that they have been able to raise $12 million in series A funding.

This excellent funding, was achieved through help by Lummus Technology who co-funded the financing. It was last year that this company revealed their plans to build four bio-based polypropylene (PP) plants within the United States. It was previously agreed that this project would take place through a partnership with Citroniq.

The funding that has been raised is expected to make it possible for Citroniq to further advance the planning, design and finally, construction of their first ‘green PP’ plant. It has also been planned that this plant will be established within the US state of Nebraska.

On top of this, the companies have planned that the plant will employ the Verdene PP suite of four technologies that have been developed by Lummus. These technologies include, ‘ethanol to ethylene technology,’ ‘dimer technology,’ ‘olefins conversion technology’ and ‘polypropylene technology.’

Furthermore, the Nebraska plant currently has a completion date of 2027 and the expectation of this plant is to produce 400,000 tonnes of bio-polypropylene a year. If this aim is achieved, it would mean that this plant would be the first plant int North America that is capable of achieving this level of production capacity.

President and Chief Executive Officer, Lummus Technology, Leon de Bruyn, commented, "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. Lummus' latest investment in Citroniq builds on this progress and strengthens our partnership, working together to lower carbon emissions in the plastics industry."

Lummus also said, ‘it is the only technology provider able to supply all the proven, low-energy technologies to produce renewable green PP from biogenic ethanol.’

Citroniq mentioned, that ‘the plant would capture and avoid 2 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per year.’