Title : The electrification of chemical engineering as a way for the process intensification
Abstract:
In the Paris Agreement of 2015, UN member states agreed to limit global warming to 2°C versus pre-industrial levels. This would imply reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 80 to 95 % of the 1990 level by 2050. In 2019, the United Nations announced that over 60 countries — including the United Kingdom and the European Union (with the exception of Poland) — had committed to. Regarding this ambitious global challenge, hydrogen is enjoying a renewed and rapidly growing attention in Europe and around the world: in particular, the EU strongly believes that hydrogen represents a key priority to achieve the European Green Deal and Europe’s clean energy transition in different sectors. In particular, the electrification of heat provides attractive decarbonisation pathways for industry and will significantly change industrial electricity use in a carbon-constrained world. Similar to electrification in residential and commercial buildings, industrial electrification primarily involves substituting heat generated from combustion for heat generated from an electrical source. Unlike the buildings sectors, however, industry has a much wider range of required temperatures and possible technologies. The recent exponential growth of renewable electricity resources, wind and solar power, provides a major opportunity for the electrification of the industry processes by harnessing low-cost carbon-free energy.
Audience take away:
- The presentation could allow the audience to view Chemical Engineering in a new point of view, by identifying the limiting step of a process and consequently generating alternatives in order to implement an innovative process.
- The presentation could help in a sustainable process design, and in a scale-down of an existing industrial process, with the aim for example of a distributed H2 production.
