Circular Steam Project

Chemistry produces the building blocks for basic products like our clothing, furniture, household products and construction materials. This is exactly what LyondellBasell and Covestro do at their Maasvlakte plant in the Netherlands. Producing these building blocks requires energy. If fossil fuels are used to provide this energy, CO₂ and other greenhouse gases are emitted.

That is why in 2018, LyondellBasell and Covestro decided to start the Circular Steam Project: An innovative new process to re-use generated heat, to produce high-pressure steam, which is used in the production process. To do so, they built a new bio plant and incinerator on their Maasvlakte site, in which the waste of their production is treated and transformed into steam. The steam is now used as an energy source in the existing on-site production plant, thus making it a circular process.

The new installation resulted in an overall annual reduction of ca. 140,000 metric tons CO₂ emissions, equal to taking 31,000 cars off the road. This translates to yearly energy savings of 0.9 Petajoule, equaling the electricity use of the city of Breda’s 90,000 households. Moreover, it avoids the release of 11 million kilograms of salt residue into the surface water.

Associated SDG targets