[ Chemical Industry ]
[ Chemical Industry ]
their customers for solutions to decarbonise chemical value chains . In view of the high prices for natural gas and other energy sources , the development has gained significant momentum in 2022 . Across the board , global chemical plant suppliers report an increasing share of orders for sustainable solutions in their latest annual reports . However , the market has changed significantly compared to the Corona years of 2020 and 2021 . The traditional oil and gas business is also humming , with increased prices for crude oil and natural gas leading to a revival of upstream activities in 2022 . With projects worth over USD 2 trillion US , oil and gas industry investments reached a new record high in 2022 . And because the largest chemical plant construction companies usually also have a foothold in the oil and gas business , plant construction capacity is becoming scarce . The demand for plant engineering solutions is also intensified by politics : it is estimated that the Inflation Reduction Act ( IRA ) passed by the US government in 2022 alone could lead to investments of USD 369 billion in the area of energy security and climate neutrality by 2030 . The EU Commission is planning on a similar scale with its REPowerEU programme , and Japan also wants to invest massively as part of its Green Transformation programme . Multinational suppliers such as Fluor , Worley , Technip and Samsung Engineering have recently reported not only a significant increase in incoming orders , but also spectacular decarbonisation projects by their customers . In December , for example , the start of construction for a new steam cracker in the port of Antwerp caused a stir : the British petrochemical group Ineos is building an ethane cracker there under the title “ Project One ”, which , after commissioning in 2026 , is to emit around 50 % less greenhouse gas than the most efficient plants of this kind to date . At EUR 3.5 billion it is the largest investment project in the European chemical industry in the past 25 years . The contract for the technology licence and the front-end engineering and design ( FEED ) has been secured by Technip Energies .
Intensive cooperation between chemistry and plant engineering The spectacular project is just one of many : almost all chemical companies
The INEOS pier and chemical plant at Antwerp , Belgium where the company is building an ethane cracker that will emit 50 % less greenhouse gas than the most efficient plants of this kind to date . Photo by Dreamstime .
that operate steam crackers are now working on climate-friendly solutions for the cracking furnaces because ethene is the starting point for many plastics and basic chemicals , and to date almost 700 kilograms of CO 2 are produced per tonne of ethene . The project is so huge that it requires new cooperative ventures between plant builders and operators - and even cross-competitive ones : BASF , Sabic and Linde are developing an electrically heated cracking furnace
jointly . At the same time , Dow and Shell , together with researchers from the Dutch TNO , are pushing ahead with the electrification of steam crackers . Together with the plant manufacturer Fluor , Dow wants to build a steam cracker with net zero CO 2 emissions in Fort Saskatchewan , Canada . The Brazilian chemical company Braskem wants to electrify its crackers together with the Finnish technology and plant engineering company Coolbrook . And time is pressing : because largescale chemical plants will operate for several decades , projects planned today must be net-zero-capable with a view to 2050 . Promising new processes such as methane pyrolysis or methanol synthesis from biomass or electrolysis hydrogen are not yet available for large-scale use . As soon as the processes are developed in the laboratory , plant engineering will have the task of scaling up these “ first-of-akind ” solutions from the laboratory to the industrial scale . A key role is therefore played - at least as a bridging technology - by the capture and storage of CO 2 , known as Carbon Capture and Storage
“ The mammoth task of decarbonisation is changing chemical plant construction itself ”
( CCS ). Dow and Ineos , for example , are relying on this approach in their current cracker projects , but the net zero target can also be achieved for other chemical processes such as ammonia production . In March 2023 , the first ship transport of CO 2 captured in an Ineos chemical plant in Antwerp caused a sensation : this marked the start of the crossborder Greensand project , in which up to 8 million tonnes of CO 2 are to be stored annually in a depleted oil field off the Danish North Sea coast . In addition to Ineos , the energy company Wintershall DEA and the engineering company Aker Carbon Capture are involved in the project .
28 Stainless Steel World June 2024 www . stainless-steel-world . net