10 Trends for the Process Industry
You Should Know
There is currently a lot of talk about mega-trends, such as
globalisation. Our look at the trends will not centre on these headline issues.
Read here what is on the mind of the process industry at this year’s ACHEMA.
Mega-plants:
The world of plant engineering and construction is at the moment
vacillating between the extremes: in China, India and on the Arabian peninsula,
world-scale plants are springing up everywhere, and in Europe process engineers
are trying out ideas for chemical containers and modular plant concepts.
Manufacturers of bulk chemicals (commodities) such as fertilisers
or primary plastics, including the basic film materials polyethylene and
polypropylene, are attracted to regions with raw material sources, such as the
Middle East, where huge chemicals complexes are being built at this moment. For
example: Saudi Arabia, location Jubail. Here, for US$ 20 billion, in a joint
venture with Saudi-Aramco, Dow is conjuring up a factory out of the desert
sand, with the intention of churning out three million tonnes of chemical
products per year from 2016 on.
Modular plant construction:
Bigger, higher, further is the motto in major plant engineering
and construction, which is increasingly moving its base to the emerging
markets. Faster, cheaper and more flexible, in contrast, are the watch-words
when the subject is fine and speciality chemicals. If modular plant
construction and chemicals containers are really going to be the answer to
everything will come out in the wash. At the moment, at least, everyone with a
name and reputation in the sector is looking into ideas intended to get the
German and European chemicals industries back into top shape. All of this is
running under the catch-word 50 Percent Idea and connects projects such as F3 Copiride
or the Evotrainer by Evonik
The digital plant:
Another facet of the 50 Percent Idea is the digital plant. Jürgen
S. Kussi, Head of Plant Layout and Piping at Bayer Technology Services, is one
of those convinced that this will switch on a turbine capable of reducing
project development times, from the idea to the completed plant, by half. The
trend-setter here is the chemicals giant BASF, which in 2010 launched an
ambitious project with the self-introducing name Digital Plant @ BASF2020. The
aim behind it: for every real plant, a digital plant should also exist. What is
needed are standards and object-orientated integrated CAE systems which network
2D and 3D planning on an inter-tool and inter-disciplinary level. In addition:
software which makes it possible to commission and maintain a plant on the basis
of the planning data.
Process analysis technology:
The PAT classic NIR has in the meantime become standard in
chemicals — the NIR probe in the column sump of the distillation plant, for
example.
But now PAT is successful under the heading knowledge-based
production and is now set not only to bring light into events in the reactor,
but also to help to operate plants “close to the wind”, i.e. optimised in terms
of process technology and economics. It is furthermore a feature of genuinely
forward-looking operation that data is analysed “hot from the process” and fed
into a closed loop which in turn inputs into the process control system.
Process intensification:
Experts can argue splendidly over whether process intensification
is new or simply old wine in new skins. Whatever the case, the fact is that in
recent years clever equipment has been developed for combining basic process
operations such as, for example, mixing and separating. The best known is
reactive distillation, which is generally categorised under process
integration.
But process intensification is much more than hybrid machines: it
is a matter of improving heat and material exchange, thus opening new process
windows and developing e.g. nano-scale characteristics, as Volker Hessel,
Director of IMM (Mainz) and team member on the Copiride project, explains.
Energy-efficient processes:
Running a chloralkali electrolysis consumes as much energy as a
small town, and in the production of some basic chemicals the share of energy
in the costs is as high as 60%. These figures alone underline the importance of
energy-efficient processes. But there are hardly any small adjustment screws
left, since many processes have already been tuned to the limit. BASF chairman
Harald Schwager confirmed this recently in a PROCESS interview: “To be honest,
much of what is technically realisable has already been done by us at BASF
plants.”
The topic energy efficiency has therefore become an issue for top
management and a major strategic consideration. Synergies between production
plants on the same site have become more important, for example, and chemicals
parks, with their centralised infrastructures, are gaining even more
significance. In the meantime, the Namur has also declared energy efficiency a
trans-sector topic, and the VDMA (German Engineering Federation) is pushing the
cause forward with its Blue Competence initiative.
CO2footprint:
It is still anyone’s guess when the plant constructor in the
process industry, too, will be obliged to estimate potential climate gas
emissions even in the tender documents. Yet the carbon footprint is already
putting pressure on management in the sector. This is evident from projects at
e.g. Bayer. The corporation is investigating 100 plants worldwide with the help
of the Climate Check. The special point here: for the first time, the experts
evaluate the entire production process, including all pre-products and
energies.
The Climate Check combines two elements: the climate footprint,
which indicates the climate-relevant effects of the production of a product,
and the energy efficiency check, which works out the potential for reduction.
At ACHEMA, Veolia, plant constructor for water plants, will present a method of
determining the carbon footprint of water treatment plants.
Resource efficiency:
“Germany is leading in the development of high-value
technologies in the field of resource efficiency,” Thomas Bieringer, CEO of
Invite, recently said in an interview. But how does resource efficiency really
look in the process industry? The resource most in discussion since the energy
turn-around is without doubt energy, which is of particular importance for the
chemicals sector. But it is also important to conserve raw materials, whether
re-growable or fossil.
How one can
apply resource efficiency to the details of the production of automation
components can be shown by, for example, Wago or Gemü, who have integrated the
principle of sustainability into their firm’s philosophy.
OPEX:
Nothing is as permanent as change — this is the core statement
of the Operational Excellence initiatives in the chemicals and pharmaceuticals
industry. Exploding raw material and energy costs, an international field of
competitors that is cooperating ever more closely, and the prospering Asians —
the grounds for activities of this kind are well-known.
Almost all major
players in the sector, such as Evonik, Clariant, Merck or Roche, are therefore
striving for Operational Excellence, pursuing on this path the aim of
conquering or maintaining places at the top. There are many starting points:
energy efficiency and capacity bottle-necks are recurrent topics, as are the
wish for higher plant availability or the idea of merging process steps with
each other and thus intensifying processes.
Raw materials shift:
Mineral oil, coal, natural gas or bio-mass — the discussion about
the raw material mix of the future has just begun. “In the medium term, the
basis will widen from mineral oil to natural gas,” predicts Professor Michael
Röper, responsible for Science Relations and Innovation Management at BASF. But
biomass is also becoming more important, a trend from the plant constructors in
particular are profiting.
For, until now, syngas has been the most important intermediate
when it is a question of use as a chemical raw material. But hybrid processes,
combining biotechnology and chemical synthesis, are also gaining popularity, as
exemplified by polybutylene succinate. The plant constructor Uhde
Inventa-Fischer has just presented a process for manufacturing the biopolymer polybutylene
succinate (PBS), produced by continuous poly-condensation of succinic acid and
butanediol. A pilot-project will start very soon in Leuna/Germany.
Author / Editor: Anke
Geipel-Kern / Dominik Stephan
PROCESS WORLDWIDE
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