Reimagining petrochemical clusters by defossilising chemical building blocks
J.T. Manalal (TU Delft - Technology, Policy and Management)
C.A. Ramirez Ramirez – Promotor (TU Delft - Applied Sciences)
M.D.M. Pérez-Fortes – Copromotor (TU Delft - Technology, Policy and Management)
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Abstract
Today’s day-to-day essentials like packaging, cosmetics, medicines, fertilisers, detergents and paints are made primarily from fossil-based raw materials such as crude oil or natural gas. To reach the ambitious CO2 emission reduction targets needed to mitigate climate change, replacing the use of fossil-based feedstocks with sustainable carbon feedstocks (i.e. defossilisation) will be vital. In today’s petrochemical industry, fossil-based raw materials are first broken down into chemical building blocks (CBB) which are the backbone of the chemical sector. The CBB production can be defossilised by using alternative carbon sources (ACS) such as CO2, biomass and plastic waste as feedstocks. However, changing the feedstock to produce CBB is not just limited to changing a given technology, as CBB are generally produced in highly interconnected petrochemical clusters. Thus, changes in feedstock can result in ripple effects along the interconnected value chains. Identifying and quantifying such ripple effects at process and cluster levels were the focus of this dissertation. The research highlights that ACS feedstock limitation will play a key role in how industrial clusters will develop. The work in this thesis shows that there is no single “silver bullet” process to defossilise the production of CBB, but a combination of ACS and fossil-based technologies will be required due to the magnitude of energy and material required for such a change.