Carbon monoxide is one of the most widely used industrial gases in heavy industry, serving as a critical chemical feedstock across steel production, chemical manufacturing, and synthetic fuel synthesis. It functions as both a reducing agent and a carbon-carrying building block, making it indispensable to processes that underpin the global economy. The sections below unpack exactly where CO is used, how it is produced, and why the industry is rethinking where that CO comes from.

What industries rely most heavily on carbon monoxide?

The industries that rely most heavily on carbon monoxide are steel production, chemical manufacturing, and synthetic fuel production. These sectors consume CO at scale, using it either as a reducing agent to process raw materials or as a feedstock to build more complex carbon-containing molecules. Across all three, CO is not a byproduct to manage but a deliberate input that drives core production chemistry.

In steelmaking, CO plays a direct role in reducing iron ore to metallic iron inside blast furnaces. In the chemical sector, it is a key precursor for producing acetic acid, polycarbonates, methanol, and a broad range of other compounds. Synthetic fuel producers rely on CO as one half of syngas, the mixture that feeds Fischer-Tropsch and other conversion processes to produce e-fuels and sustainable aviation fuel.

Beyond these primary sectors, CO industrial applications extend to petrochemicals, where it participates in hydroformylation reactions to produce aldehydes and alcohols, and to specialty materials manufacturing, where it enables the production of polymers and fine chemicals. The common thread across all these sectors is that CO delivers carbon atoms in a chemically reactive form that can be directed into new molecular structures without the complexity of working with solid carbon or CO2 directly.

How is carbon monoxide used in steel production?

In steel production, carbon monoxide is used primarily as a reducing agent in the blast furnace, where it reacts with iron ore to strip away oxygen and produce metallic iron. This reduction reaction is fundamental to conventional steelmaking: CO binds to the oxygen in iron oxides, releasing CO2 and leaving behind the iron that becomes the basis for steel. Without a reliable source of CO, the blast furnace chemistry does not function.

The CO used in this process is generated internally when coke, a form of processed coal, burns in the lower section of the furnace. The hot gases that rise through the furnace contain significant concentrations of CO, which then perform the reduction work as they pass through the iron ore charge. This means that in traditional steelmaking, CO production and CO consumption are tightly coupled within the same process.

Steel plants also generate large volumes of CO-rich off-gases as a byproduct of blast furnace and converter operations. These gases have historically been used as a low-grade fuel within the plant, but they represent a significant source of recoverable carbon that can be captured and reprocessed. This is precisely the opportunity that carbon monoxide heavy industry decarbonization strategies are targeting: instead of burning those off-gases, the CO they contain can be recycled back into the production process or converted into higher-value chemical feedstocks. The first industrial trial of plasma-based CO2 conversion took place at a major European steel plant, demonstrating that this approach is technically viable at scale and that impurities naturally present in steelmaking gases do not compromise the conversion process.

What chemicals are made using carbon monoxide as a feedstock?

Carbon monoxide is a feedstock for a wide range of industrial chemicals, including acetic acid, polycarbonates, methanol, aldehydes, isocyanates, and formic acid. These are not niche specialty products but large-volume commodity chemicals that underpin plastics, pharmaceuticals, adhesives, solvents, and agricultural inputs. CO’s role as a carbon monoxide chemical feedstock is therefore central to the entire chemical value chain.

• Acetic acid: Produced through the carbonylation of methanol, where CO inserts a carbonyl group into the methanol molecule. Acetic acid is used in the production of vinyl acetate, purified terephthalic acid, and a broad range of solvents and coatings.
• Polycarbonates: CO is used in the production of polycarbonate plastics, which are found in optical lenses, electronic housings, and safety glazing. Phosgene, itself derived from CO, is a key intermediate in conventional polycarbonate synthesis.
• Methanol: While methanol is primarily produced from syngas, CO is a direct component of that syngas mixture and participates in the methanol synthesis reaction alongside hydrogen.
• Aldehydes and alcohols via hydroformylation: CO reacts with hydrogen and alkenes in the oxo process to produce aldehydes, which are then converted to alcohols used in plasticizers, detergents, and lubricants.
• Isocyanates: Used in polyurethane production, isocyanates are manufactured using phosgene derived from CO, making CO an upstream input for the entire polyurethane industry.

The scale of CO consumption in chemical manufacturing is substantial. Any disruption to CO supply, whether from fossil feedstock price volatility or tightening carbon regulations, has direct consequences for the cost and availability of these downstream products. This is why chemical companies are increasingly evaluating electrified CO production as a way to stabilize their carbon monoxide feedstock supply independent of fossil gas markets.

What is syngas and how does carbon monoxide fit into it?

Syngas, short for synthesis gas, is a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen that serves as a versatile intermediate feedstock for producing fuels, chemicals, and energy. Carbon monoxide is one of the two essential components of syngas, and the ratio of CO to hydrogen in the mixture determines which downstream products can be efficiently synthesized. Adjusting that ratio allows producers to target methanol, Fischer-Tropsch fuels, ammonia precursors, or other outputs from the same basic gas stream.

In synthetic fuel production, syngas is converted through the Fischer-Tropsch process into liquid hydrocarbons that can substitute for diesel, jet fuel, or naphtha. The CO in syngas provides the carbon backbone for these fuel molecules, while the hydrogen provides the energy-carrying hydrogen atoms. For e-fuel producers seeking to reduce fossil dependency, the origin of the CO in their syngas matters enormously: CO sourced from recycled CO2 rather than from natural gas reforming carries a fundamentally different carbon footprint.

D-CRBN’s electrified syngas production approach converts CO2 and methane directly into syngas using plasma technology, without requiring an external hydrogen input. When the methane used is biomethane from sources such as wastewater treatment or biogas plants, and the CO2 is of biogenic origin, the resulting syngas qualifies as green syngas. This enables synthetic fuel and chemical producers to source their CO-containing feedstock from circular carbon streams rather than fossil extraction, reducing both their direct emissions and their exposure to fossil fuel price volatility.

Where does industrial carbon monoxide currently come from?

Industrial carbon monoxide is currently produced almost entirely from fossil feedstocks, primarily through steam methane reforming and coal gasification. In steam methane reforming, natural gas reacts with steam at high temperatures to produce syngas, which contains both CO and hydrogen. Coal gasification follows a similar principle but uses solid coal as the carbon source. Both routes are energy-intensive, thermally driven, and directly tied to fossil fuel supply chains.

A smaller portion of industrial CO comes as a byproduct of other processes. Blast furnace off-gases in steel plants contain significant CO concentrations, and some chemical processes generate CO-rich streams as a secondary output. In these cases, the CO is often used as a low-grade fuel within the facility rather than being captured and reused as a chemical feedstock, which represents a significant underutilization of its chemical value.

The dependence on fossil-derived CO creates two structural vulnerabilities for industrial operators. First, the cost of CO tracks closely with natural gas and coal prices, which are subject to geopolitical disruption and market volatility. Second, fossil-based CO production generates substantial CO2 emissions, with conventional production estimated to emit around 2.1 tonnes of CO2-equivalent per tonne of CO produced globally. As carbon pricing under mechanisms like the EU Emissions Trading System tightens, this embedded carbon cost becomes an increasingly significant financial liability for industrial buyers of CO.

How is carbon monoxide produced from CO2 recycling?

Carbon monoxide can be produced from CO2 recycling by breaking the carbon-oxygen bond in CO2 molecules and removing one oxygen atom, leaving behind carbon monoxide. This conversion requires energy to overcome the stability of the CO2 molecule, and the method used to supply that energy determines the efficiency, cost, and carbon footprint of the resulting CO. When the energy source is renewable electricity, the process produces CO without the fossil-derived emissions associated with conventional production routes.

The most advanced electrified approach to this conversion uses plasma technology. In a plasma reactor, renewable electricity generates a high-energy plasma state that selectively activates the CO2 molecule, breaking the carbon-oxygen bond with high precision and without producing unwanted byproducts such as carbon black. D-CRBN’s patented Plasma ARC™ platform achieves a CO2 conversion rate of 90.5% in a single pass, with an energy requirement of 1,100 kWh per tonne of CO2. The CAPEX of the system is 50% lower than competing reverse water-gas shift technology, and the OPEX is 30% lower, driven by the high conversion efficiency and the use of steel as the primary structural material rather than rare-earth metals or complex geometries.

What makes this approach particularly practical for heavy industry is the system’s design philosophy. The plasma reactor operates at ambient pressure, switches on and off rapidly to take advantage of intermittent renewable electricity, and can handle diluted CO2 streams containing up to 50% nitrogen, meaning it integrates with a wide range of industrial capture setups without requiring highly purified input gas. The modular systems convert approximately 2,000 tonnes of CO2 per square meter annually, enabling meaningful production volumes within a compact industrial footprint.

From a lifecycle perspective, producing CO through plasma-based CO2 recycling using renewable electricity and biogenic CO2 can achieve a carbon intensity of around 0.7 tonnes of CO2-equivalent per tonne of CO produced, compared to the global fossil-based average of 2.1 tonnes. This makes electrified CO production not only a lower-emission alternative but a genuinely carbon-competitive one as ETS carbon prices increase the cost of fossil-derived feedstocks. Industrial operators in steel, chemicals, and synthetic fuels who want to electrify their feedstock production can integrate this technology directly into existing infrastructure, with no need to decommission current assets. For those evaluating the underlying technology in detail, the D-CRBN technology platform provides a full technical overview of the plasma conversion process and its industrial deployment model. Teams ready to assess site-specific configurations can get in contact directly to design the right solution for their production environment.

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