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The chemical industry needs a clear strategy on renewable carbon
Nova-Institute is an independent institute. Nova-Institute offers research and consultancy with a focus on bio- and CO2-based economy. In august they published the paper ‘Renewable Carbon is Key to a Sustainable and Future-Oriented Chemical Industry’. Errit Bekkering supported the article on behalf of Chemport Europe.
Renewable Carbon
It is an interesting paper to read, as it gives an academic perspective on ‘Renewable Carbon’ for the Chemical Industry. The article clearly underlines one of the basic assumptions of the recent agenda that was jointly drafted by the chemical companies in the Eemsdelta. In this agenda the pathways and actions toward a carbon neutral chemical cluster in 2050 are defined.
Frontrunner in green chemistry
The things that are mentioned in the article that ‘need to be done’ such as optimizing processes, drastically reducing energy, change-over to sustainable energy, using CO2 as feedstock and improving sustainability in the use-phase of materials as well as at the end of their life or start of a 2ndlife, all these things are under development, in scale-up phase or already put into actual practise in the Chemport Ecosystem. With this we probably are a frontrunner in green chemistry in Europe.
Examples of actual interesting and encouraging industrial initiatives in the Chemport region
- The development of the ‘Dawn Technology’ in the bio-refinery pilot plant in Delfzijl (Avantium)
- Thermal recycling of waste in Delfzijl (EEW) and use of biomass to provide steam (Eneco)
- Plans for large scale offshore-wind on the North Sea just North of the Waddenzee with a direct connection to the chemical cluster Delfzijl
- Large scale mechanical recycling of PE and PP in Heerenveen (Omrin) en Wijster (Attero)
- Construction of a chemical recycling demo plant for PET in Emmen (Cumapol)
- Various new applications based on rPET (Morssinkhof, cumapol)
- Scale up of technology to convert CO2 directly into chemicals using cyanobacteria in Delfzijl (Photanol)
- Scale up of ‘Integrated Cascading Catalytic Pyrolysis technology’ to convert various side-stream into BTX in Groningen (BioBTX)