Driving Sustainability in the Chemical Industry

The challenges of sustainability to the chemical industry are becoming ever more evident, especially for a Company as BASF with such a wide portfolio of products and technologies. From the perspective of BASF, the current starting point of nearly all our value chains is steam cracking of natural gas as well as steam reforming. This generates olefins, aromatics and hydrogen with which we then modify with a wealth of chemistries to generate a multitude of products. The downside is that due to the energy intensive nature of our technologies as well as from yield loss undesired CO2 is generated in significant amounts.

The talk covers current technologies in comparison to different future technologies that have the potential of reducing BASF’s carbon footprint. These include electrically heated steam cracking, water hydrolysis, and methane pyrolysis. Additionally, focus will be on a view on the thermodynamic considerations regarding the potential of these novel technological alternatives especially in the light of energy requirements. Their feasibility and economic viability on a megaton-per-year scale is crucial to fulfilling our company’s strategy to achieve CO2-neutral growth until 2030.

Speaker: Detlef Kratz, BASF SE