The problem: a waste stream nobody wants
The UK biodiesel industry produces tens of thousands of tonnes of crude glycerine each year as an unavoidable byproduct of transesterification. For every tonne of biodiesel produced, roughly 100kg of crude glycerine is generated as a co-product. It is contaminated, low-grade, and costly to upgrade and to sell into existing refined glycerine markets. Most of it is disposed of, with a carbon footprint, and with increasing regulatory scrutiny.
The UK’s independent fuel suppliers and biodiesel producers understand this problem intimately. The challenge was to establish a new, commercially viable route for it.
The pattern is consistent across the sector. Crude glycerine is generated in significant volumes as an unavoidable part of biodiesel production, finding a high-value use for it is both a commercial and an environmental priority, and the routes evaluated to date have depended on subsidy structures that may not exist in five years. The economics have to work on their own.
The chemistry: one feedstock, a family of products
Supercritical's electrochemical platform offers unparalleled flexibility of operating conditions that open reaction pathways unavailable to conventional electrochemistry. Applied to crude glycerine, this enables a direct conversion to formates and hydrogen in a single continuous process.
Formates are the product family. Named precisely, the members are potassium formate (the salt), methyl formate (the ester) and formic acid (the acid), each with its own established market. As a family, the chemicals are used in leather processing, textile production, agriculture, and increasingly as a liquid hydrogen carrier for fuel cell applications. Demand is growing. A UK domestic source produced from waste would command a premium.
Co-production of two high-value chemicals changes the economics, and it is the chemistry that facilitates it. The glycerine pathway has a feedstock that is low cost, and using the glycerine as an electron donor actually helps make the production of hydrogen cheaper too. The process yields two products that can be sold independently.
A feedstock available at low cost, or carrying a disposal liability, that donates electrons more readily than pure water means lower operating cost. Two high-purity, saleable, sustainable products mean cost parity with the fossil route. That is the economic structure that makes the Glycerine→X programme differentiated from conventional green hydrogen economics.
The development programme
Employing Supercritical’s platform to define a Glycerine→X programme follows the four-stage development model that underpins all of Supercritical's bespoke chemical conversion work.
Deep characterisation of the producer's crude glycerine stream: composition, contamination profile, available volumes, and seasonal variability. Understanding what goes in before designing what comes out.
AI-accelerated evaluation of electrocatalytic pathways. Supercritical's internal assessment tools map the 'what could be': product yields, market pricing, operating cost structures, before a single experiment is run.
Material discovery, electrocatalyst selection, and empirical testing at Supercritical's Global Technology Centre in West London. A six-month programme that delivers enough proof to commit to first commercial plant engineering.
Engineering design, procurement, and commissioning of the first commercial-scale glycerine conversion unit, co-located with existing biodiesel production infrastructure. Target: operational by 2028.
De-icing: planet first, in the ground and in the air
Airport runway de-icing is the unsung hero that keeps us flying through winter. Airports need a de-icer that works at low temperature, does not corrode aircraft or infrastructure, and causes little harm to the ground and water around it. Potassium formate meets all three, which is why it is already specified at airports operating in ecologically sensitive catchments, and adoption is picking up as awareness grows.
Today that formate is made from fossil feedstocks. Made instead from waste glycerine it is chemically identical, and drops into the same supply chain with no reformulation and no change at the airport. The application is part of live scaling and partner conversations rather than a theoretical market.
Beyond de-icing the same family serves heat-transfer fluids, synthetic leather and textiles, and agrochemical and pharmaceutical intermediates. See the formates solution →
Why this matters beyond glycerine
The Glycerine→X programme proves the breadth of Supercritical’s electrochemical platform, and stands as a proof point for an entirely new category of green chemistry. If the economics hold at first commercial plant, and our modelling suggests they do, the same development model applies to dozens of other organic waste streams across the chemical, agricultural, and food and beverage industries.
Crude glycerine is the first. It will not be the last.
If you have a waste stream and want to understand what value it might contain, we want to hear from you.