Chemical Engineering August 2021 - 6

tive methods to answer
more complex toxicological
questions without animal
testing. " Andreas Natsch,
head of in vitro Molecular
Screening at Givaudan
adds: " This strategy has a
better predictivity for human
allergy risks as compared to
traditional animal testing. "
E-CRACKERS
A joint-technology program
to electrically heat steamcracker
furnaces, which
Dow, Inc. (Midland, Mich;
www.dow.com) and Shell
Chemicals (London, U.K.;
www.shell.com) began in
June 2020, is progressing
forward. The joint program
was awarded €3.5 million
($4.2 million) in MOOI
(Mission-driven Research,
Development and Innovation
subsidy) scheme funding
by the Netherlands Government.
In addition, the
partners have joined forces
with The Netherlands Organization
for Applied Scientific
Research (TNO; The Hague;
www.tno.nl) and the Institute
for Sustainable Process
Technology (ISPT; Amersfoort,
both the Netherlands;
https://ispt.eu). This multicompany
collaboration aims
to accelerate key milestones
for the near-term progress
and longer-term breakthroughs
needed.
In the first year, the program
has advanced electrification
solutions for today's steam
crackers while also pursuing
game-changing technologies
for novel designs
of electrified crackers in the
longer-term. Joint teams
in the Netherlands and the
U.S. have deployed their expertise
in electrical design,
metallurgy, hydrocarbon
technology and computational
fluid dynamics to narrow
down concepts, validate
emissions benefits, advance
patents, demonstrate the
durability of electric heating
elements, and partner with
equipment suppliers.
The companies are now
evaluating construction
of a multi-megawatt pilot
plant, with potential startup
in 2025, subject to investment
support.
(Continues on p. 8)
6
CHEMICAL ENGINEERING WWW.CHEMENGONLINE.COM
AUGUST 2021
Piloting a process that makes hydrogen and carbon
from methane
N
ext year, construction will begin on an
industrial-scale pilot plant to further
develop a new process that decomposes
methane into H2 and carbon.
The process uses a thermo-catalytic decomposition
(TCD) technology developed by Hycamite
TCD Technologies Oy (Kokkola, Finland;
www.hycamite.com). The pilot plant will be
located in the Kokkola Industrial Park (KIP),
which has the highest concentration of inorganic
chemical industry in Northern Europe.
In the TCD process (diagram), natural gas
or biogas is continuously fed to a fixed-bed
or fluidized bed (or both) reactor operating at
500-800°C and 1 atm. In the reactor, CH4 is
split into H2 and C using a proprietary catalyst
that the company has developed over several
years. H2 is purified (>95%) by pressure-swing
absorption (PSA), and the unreacted CH4 is
circulated back to the reactor. Solid carbon
is discharged from the reactor,
cooled and packaged.
The technology can generate
several different highquality
allotropes of carbon,
and can be optimized for
preferred allotropes.
Because the reactor is
LNG/natural
gas
Biogas
Automation,
process control
heated by hydrogen and renewable electricity,
with heat recovery, there are zero CO2 emissions
generated in the process. According to
CEO Laura Rahikka, TCD hydrogen technology
has the highest H2 yield per unit energy
compared to steam methane reforming (SMR)
and electrolysis of water. Based on the carbon
product, the price of the H2 generated is
" highly competitive " compared to other technologies,
says Rahikka.
" Our goal is to implement large-scale hydrogen
production over the next couple of
years, using our new technology, " says Rahikka.
" The hydrogen we generate can be
used for clean energy production and for
various industrial processes. Our output will
enable companies to switch to hydrogen in
the next few years, despite shortages in windpowered
hydrogen production that may continue
for some time, " she says.
Hycamite
CH42H2+C
Hycamite
PSA &
compression
station
process plant
Carbon
handling
This sustainable, supercharged catalyst
cleans up mold
A
lyst
family of oxidation catalysts known
as TAML has been revamped to increase
activity by several orders of
magnitude, even at very dilute cataconcentrations.
Developed by Sudoc
(Cambridge, Mass.; www.sudoc.com), these
peroxidase-mimicking catalysts present a
more environmentally sustainable option in
challenging cleaning and treatment applications,
such as mold treatment, where toxic
chemicals are typically required, says Roger
Berry, CEO of Sudoc. " Because of its oxidative
characteristics, the catalyst acts as a 'super-cleaner.'
Our team has formulated a very
powerful mold cleaner that uses significantly
less hypochlorite than other products on the
market, " adds Berry.
The key to TAML catalysts' performance
alongside oxidants is an iron atom surrounded
by a macrocyclic amide-containing ligand,
which makes the catalyst extremely active
in oxidation reactions, but also very resilient,
especially compared to other transition-metal
oxidation catalysts, explains Matt Mills, Sudoc's
director of research and development.
The combination of activity and resilience
comes after decades of iterations to pinpoint
the weak points in the macrocycle and formulate
a structure optimized to survive in conditions
where other catalysts would quickly
burn up, but also where the homogeneous
catalyst macrocycle can disappear from the
environment once its job is complete. " Earlier
versions of the catalyst had a closer ratio
of catalyst activity to its self-destructiveness,
so you could see the potential, but the latest
versions greatly extend the ratio. So
that decoupling was a major breakthrough, "
adds Berry.
Beyond resistance to oxidation and nucleophilic
attack, the catalyst's structure is highly
tunable, so it can be optimized for many
environmental-remediation tasks. Sudoc is
launching its first commercial product, a mold
cleaner, later this year, and several demonstration
projects are underway to test large-scale
treatment. " There have been a wide variety
of bench-scale studies looking at destroying
pharmaceuticals, explosives, hormones and
other substances. We're also treating wastewater
with our technology and showing numerous
different compounds that were present
in the effluent that can get reduced, some
almost to non-detectable levels, " says Mills.
Clean hydrogen
Sustalnable
high-tech
carbon
http://www.hycamite.com http://www.dow.com http://www.shell.com http://www.tno.nl https://www.ispt.eu http://www.sudoc.com http://WWW.CHEMENGONLINE.COM
Chemical Engineering August 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Chemical Engineering August 2021
