FAQ

We at Evonik Active Oxygens manufacture sustainable products that can replace less sustainable products in a wide range of applications. Hydrogen peroxide, for example, degrades to just oxygen and water during any reaction, while peracetic acid degrades to acetic acid as well. And in the case of persulfates, the only byproducts besides sulfate are sodium, potassium and ammonium, all naturally occurring substances that are harmless to the environment.

We are working with partners to increase our products’ positive handprint by enhancing existing sustainable applications and technologies and developing new ones. We are continuously working on reducing our footprint to make the manufacture of our products even more sustainable. Our roadmap shows where we are at on this journey.

We are continuously reducing our products’ footprint. This way, we help to ensure that our customers' products also have a lower carbon footprint – because emissions of the raw materials and process chemicals used are included in the calculation of a product's overall footprint. In application terms, our products are already sustainable: when used, our products do not produce any emissions or harmful byproducts.

By providing our process and application know-how, we help our customers to handle our products safely and to increase efficiency and safety in their processes and production facilities as well. We are developing new sustainable solutions to future challenges in strategic partnerships together with our customers and partner companies. Our global presence means we have short transport routes, and our customers also benefit from these CO₂ savings. Where feasible and where our safety regulations allow, we use reusable transport containers to save valuable resources.

Investments in sustainability are like all investments: cost effectiveness is assessed over a longer period of time. Higher costs cannot be ruled out initially. In the medium term, however, sustainably produced products will have cost advantages over conventionally manufactured products. Environmental and commercial sustainability are not mutually exclusive, but go hand in hand – that is our firm belief.

We have outlined our path to climate neutrality. We are going down this path together with partners who, like us, recognize that environmental sustainability also pays commercial dividends.

We are aware that our production processes currently still consume a lot of energy. That is why we have developed a strategy for reducing this footprint. On the one hand, we are investing in chemical and technical innovation to continuously increase efficiency in our plants. Higher efficiency means less consumption. For example, we aref working on new concepts to improve heat recovery at our production plants.

On the other hand, we will procure energy exclusively from renewable sources in the long term. Our processes already rely primarily on energy from renewable sources. Currently, we already obtain more than 85 percent of our electricity from renewable sources. This figure will be more than 90 percent by the end of 2023.

We are continuously working on improvements to our processes. For example, we are continuously enhancing the so-called working solution used in our hydrogen peroxide process , with the aim of using feedstocks even more efficiently and reducing the energy required in downstream reprocessing. This saves raw materials and steam, thus reducing the carbon footprint. As far as raw materials are concerned, our strategy is to obtain them from sustainable sources.

For example, we are gradually switching the acetic acid used to produce our peracetic acid from fossil to renewable sources. But we also look at how our customers’ manufacturing can be made more efficient through new processes. For example, we have developed special processes such as HPPO or HPPG that are highly efficient. These processes generate hardly any byproducts apart from water, meaning that little has to be separated, cleaned up or disposed of at great expense.

Hydrogen peroxide is produced using the so-called autoxidation process from hydrogen and oxygen. This process does not produce any waste gases or other substances that are harmful to the environment. The production process includes various reprocessing steps that require steam, which has a high thermal capacity. However, steam is currently produced mainly from natural gas and therefore accounts for around a quarter of the entire manufacturing process’ CO₂ emissions.

We are making a number of adjustments to reduce these emissions. Here, for example, we want to reduce our steam consumption by optimizing our process parameters and reducing heat losses with better insulation. Other approaches include energy recovery by using heat from our own processes and the use of green electricity.

Our professionals are very well trained in manufacturing and logistics. This guarantees excellent safety standards in handling, storing and transporting these chemicals. To ensure the safety of our employees and customers at all times, we offer them regular and comprehensive safety training. We regard communicating the importance of safety when handling chemicals and that measures to protect people and the environment have top priority as vital.

We pass on our decades of expertise in handling our products to our customers. When they purchase hydrogen peroxide, peracetic acid or persulfates, they can obtain a complete service package to go with the product, if required. We also advise them on constructing their own storage tank facilities.

Evonik Active Oxygens has a global set-up with a total of 19 production sites worldwide. This dense network enables us to keep our transportation routes as short as possible and thus save energy and CO₂. We are continuing to enhance our shipping by operating a sophisticated supply chain management system. We have actioned a range of measures and launched projects to reduce our shipping emissions.

This is done, for example, by transporting hydrogen peroxide in highly concentrated form and diluting it just before the last leg of the journey to the customer. The lower water content reduces the weight of the load - which lowers fuel consumption and thus CO₂ emissions during transportation.

To reduce environmentally harmful packaging waste, we avoid disposable containers wherever possible. By default, this makes sense for bulk deliveries, i.e. when transporting larger quantities of our products. In such cases, the bulk containers are returned, inspected and refilled. Our experts ensure that the containers meet our strict safety requirements. Disposable packaging cannot be completely avoided for some shipments.

However, as any reaction involving hydrogen peroxide only produces natural substances like water and oxygen, our customers can recycle those disposable containers for other uses. We also try to reduce packaging quantities by optimizing product concentrations and transportation routes.

Their special chemical properties and high efficacy make our products ideal for many different antimicrobial and oxidative applications. As no toxic byproducts or coproducts are formed when they react, hydrogen peroxide, peracetic acid and persulfates can help to minimize the use of resources in an environmentally compatible way, increase the efficiency of processes and reduce their footprint.

Our products can help to increase sustainability, especially in industries that are considered less sustainable. Take mining as an example: cyanide is used in many mines to leach metals from their ores. On the one hand, hydrogen peroxide can be used to increase leaching efficiency and therefore reduce the amount of cyanide used. On the other hand, it is used to oxidize any residual cyanide in waste flows, such as effluent water or tailing sludge, making it harmless to the environment.