“There are many roads that lead to Rome”, as the saying goes. For instance, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the chemical industry chemical sites, pathways to using electricity or hydrogen as power sources are being pursued. Steam cracking furnaces are large CO2 emission sources in the petrochemical value chain, requiring large amounts of energy. They are essential to the production of the chemical building blocks for wind turbines, solar panels and batteries, among others.
Electrification
The production of chemical building blocks needs to be done at high temperatures and therefore requires a significant amount of energy. Energy that has so far been obtained from fossil fuels. By using electricity from renewable sources instead, it is possible to reduce CO2 emissions by as much as 90%.
Many activities are being undertaken by the chemical industry to move towards electrifying these steam crackers. For example, in 2019 a consortium of petrochemical companies announced a joint investigation into how naphtha or gas steam crackers could be operated using renewable electricity instead of fossil fuels. The consortium currently includes Borealis, BP, LyondellBasell, Total, Versalis and Repsol. In 2020, Dow and Shell launched a common development agreement to accelerate the technology to electrify ethylene steam crackers. In March 2021, BASF, SABIC and Linde announced a joint agreement to develop and demonstrate solutions for electrically heated steam crackers furnaces. The construction of the demo plant started on September 1, 2022 and is planned to start up in 2024. As such, these companies are putting a time-tested technology on a completely new footing, not in the laboratory, but on a large industrial scale.
Hydrogen
INEOS is pursuing technology renewal in a new cracker investment using Hydrogen and Carbon Capture Storage (CCS), claiming the lowest GHG footprint in Europe and aiming to raise the benchmark for low carbon emissions within the European Trading Scheme (ETS) against other European crackers.
Associated SDGs
