Bayer: Process technologies key to chemical industry sustainability
7 Jul 2010
Leverkusen, Germany – As it generates an estimated 20% of greenhouse gas emissions, the global chemical industry needs to ’help itself’ in becoming a more sustainable business, according to Bayer MaterialScience (BMS), which believes the industry already has many of the technologies needed for greater energy efficiencies.
According to BMS, it has a number of ways of looking at energy usage in its own processes to achieve continuous improvement. For instance, its STRUCTese measurement and management system can deliver energy savings of up to 10% at production plants.
This system is to be established at 60 of BMS’ most energy-intensive production plants around the world by 2012 – towards a goal of cutting specific greenhouse gas emissions per tonne of product sold globally by 25% by 2020.
As examples, the company claims that its HDI (hexamethylene diisocyanate) process uses 60% less energy; its TDI (toluene diisocyanate) gas phase phosgenation plant in Caojing, China, 40% less energy; and its melt polycarbonates process, 20% less energy than conventional production processes.
BMS said it aims to continuously improve its own performance with these processes and technologies, and is also offering them to other companies. The company cited, for example, a recent licensing contract with Uhde to build a chlorine plant, based on a common salt process using Bayer’s oxygen depolarised cathode (ODC) technology.
This marked the first time that chlorine has been produced on an industrial scale via Bayer’s ODC) technology – in this case in electrolysis cells from UHDENORA. Electricity consumption will be up to 30% lower than in standard membrane technology, resulting in an indirect reduction of up to 10,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions each year.
Another example of alternative approaches is the possibility of catalysing carbon dioxide directly into polymers, preliminary work that has been underway between BMS and Aachen University in Germany. This work in catalysis is focused on finding ways of polymerising carbon dioxide directly into polymers rather than having to use oil-based feed stocks.
