From fossil to green chemicals: sustainable pathways and new carbon feedstocks for the global chemical industry

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Abstract

Green methanol and green ammonia produced by renewable electricity and electricity-based hydrogen become the backbone for a defossilised global chemical industry.

Abstract

Following current trends, the global chemical industry is set to become the largest consumer of fossil fuels. Among energy intensive industries, the chemical industry is one of the most challenging to defossilise due to the abundance of cheap fossil fuel-feedstocks and it is currently responsible for roughly 3% of global anthropogenic CO ₂ emissions. Unlike other energy-intensive industries, the chemical industry cannot be made fully sustainable directly with renewable electricity and green electricity-based hydrogen (e-hydrogen). Therefore, new green carbon feedstocks must be developed to defossilise the production of large volume organic chemicals. The most promising green carbon feedstocks are electricity-based methanol (e-methanol) and biomass-based methanol (bio-methanol), which can be used directly or as a feedstock for olefin and aromatic production. Increased recycling of plastics will reduce the amount of primary feedstock that will be required for chemical production. To investigate the energy and feedstock requirements for a global defossilisation of chemical production, scenarios are developed that reach net-zero emissions by 2040, 2050, and 2060 compared to business-as-usual conditions to 2100. High and low biomass feedstock variations are included to investigate the potential of biomass feedstocks in the future chemical industry, which are limited due to strict sustainability criteria. The results suggest that the chemical industry could become the largest e-hydrogen consumer, with a demand ranging from 16 100 to 23 100 TWh _H2,LHV in 2050. High shares of electricity-based chemicals (e-chemicals) were found to provide the lowest annualised costs, suggesting that an e-chemical transition pathway may be the most economically competitive pathway to defossilise the global chemical industry.

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Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made

Roland Geyer, Jenna R Jambeck, Kara Lavender Law (2017)

We present the first ever global account of the production, use, and end-of-life fate of all plastics ever made by humankind.

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Current and future role of Haber–Bosch ammonia in a carbon-free energy landscape

Collin S. Smith, Alfred K. Hill, Laura Torrente-Murciano (2020)

The future of green ammonia as long-term energy storage relies on the replacement of the conventional CO 2 intensive methane-fed Haber–Bosch process by distributed and agile ones aligned to the geographically isolated and intermittent renewable energy. The future of a carbon-free society relies on the alignment of the intermittent production of renewable energy with our continuous and increasing energy demands. Long-term energy storage in molecules with high energy content and density such as ammonia can act as a buffer versus short-term storage ( e.g. batteries). In this paper, we demonstrate that the Haber–Bosch ammonia synthesis loop can indeed enable a second ammonia revolution as energy vector by replacing the CO 2 intensive methane-fed process with hydrogen produced by water splitting using renewable electricity. These modifications demand a redefinition of the conventional Haber–Bosch process with a new optimisation beyond the current one which was driven by cheap and abundant natural gas and relaxed environmental concerns during the last century. Indeed, the switch to electrical energy as fuel and feedstock to replace fossil fuels ( e.g. methane) will lead to dramatic energy efficiency improvements through the use of high efficiency electrical motors and complete elimination of direct CO 2 emissions. Despite the technical feasibility of the electrically-driven Haber–Bosch ammonia, the question still remains whether such revolution will take place. We reveal that its success relies on two factors: increased energy efficiency and the development of small-scale, distributed and agile processes that can align to the geographically isolated and intermittent renewable energy sources. The former requires not only higher electrolyser efficiencies for hydrogen production but also a holistic approach to the ammonia synthesis loop with the replacement of the condensation separation step by alternative technologies such as absorption and catalysis development. Such innovations will open the door to moderate pressure systems, the development and deployment of novel ammonia synthesis catalysts, and even more importantly, the opportunity for integration of reaction and separation steps to overcome equilibrium limitations. When realised, green ammonia will reshape the current energy landscape by directly replacing fossil fuels in transportation, heating, electricity, etc. , and as done in the last century, food.