Chemical Engineering July 2016 - 19

Newsfront
Defining Sustainability in the
Chemical Process Industries
This article examines the measures - both global and local - that chemical processors are
taking to instill sustainability into everyday operations
SABIC
A
lthough discussions about sustainability
in the chemical process
industries (CPI) are usually geared
toward making processes more
environmentally sound, there are a number
of aspects that encompass longterm
sustainability for processors. These may
include safety, personnel, data management
and activism in the community. This
article highlights some recent sustainability
endeavors from across the CPI.
Making use of CO2
Reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions
has become a cornerstone of sustainability
plans, but concerns about CO2 are
not a recent development. With origins
dating back 30 years, Covestro AG's (Leverkusen,
Germany; www.covestro.com)
Dream Production project has been investigating
the feasibility of utilizing carbon from
CO2 gas as a chemical building block. A
major challenge is CO2's inert, stable nature,
which makes it unlikely to react with other
substances. In cooperation with the CAT
Catalytic Center in Aachen, Germany, the
Dream Production team discovered a zincbased
catalyst that enables efficient reactions
between high-energy epoxides and CO2
without any cumbersome side reactions. The
result is the incorporation of CO2 into polyols
- important precursor chemicals that
are typically petroleum-based. This catalysis
breakthrough led the company to invest €15
million in a manufacturing plant in Dormagen,
Germany that uses CO2 to produce a range
of polyols for flexible foams. Operations at
the plant, which has a production capacity
of 5,000 metric tons per year (m.t./yr), commenced
at a grand opening ceremony on
June 17, 2016. The CO2 is sourced from a
neighboring ammonia plant, effectively taking
the CO2 that would be released as a greenhouse
gas and putting it back into the production
process. The site-sourced CO2 also
In BrIef
mAkING USe OF CO2
CORPORATe
INTeGRATION
INDUSTRy
COLLABORATION
WORkFORCe
SUSTAINABILITy
SUSTAINABILITy IN ALL
STAGeS
Figure 1. SABIC's United CO2 purification plant captures carbon
dioxide from an ethylene glycol process and distributes it as a raw
material to other production units
offsets the portion of petroleum-based raw
materials required.
Covestro is confident in the scalability of the
process, and also plans to license the technology
to other polyol producers. While the
Dormagen plant is currently focused on foam
production, other types of novel plastics could
also be manufactured. Currently, researchers
are developing a similar continuous process
to manufacture CO2-based polyether carbonate
polyurethanes, which are precursors for
elastomers. Individual batches of the material
have been produced at laboratory scale.
The company is particularly excited about the
future opportunities of the Dream Production
process, says Covestro chief sustainability officer
Richard Northcote. " It opens a whole new
arena of carbon chemistry. If we can use it in
mattress foam, where else can we use it? "
One of the flagship projects of Saudi Basic
Industries Corp. (SABIC; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia;
www.sabic.com) is the CO2 utilization
and purification plant at the United site in
Jubail, Saudi Arabia, which was completed
in 2015 (Figure 1). The facility, said to be the
world's largest CO2 purification plant, captures
CO2 byproduct from the concentrated
ChemiCal engineering www.Chemengonline.Com july 2016
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http://www.covestro.com http://www.sabic.com http://www.Chemengonline.Com
Chemical Engineering July 2016

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