Chemical Week - November 4/11
Sustainability drives industry focus
CW staff 2024-11-08 07:17:09
Decarbonization and renewed interest in base chemicals technologies lead PEP survey
Decarbonization and sustainability technologies continue to dominate interest for the fourth consecutive year among clients of S&P Global Commodity Insights’ Process Economics Program (PEP).
One notable trend this year, however, was renewed interest in base chemicals, according to Richard Charlesworth, who leads the industry processes and cost analytics (IPCA) group at Commodity Insights, which includes PEP.
“Sustainability topics are of greatest interest, with carbon capture leading the way,” Charlesworth said. “However, in a change from the last three years, technologies for methanol to olefins, hydrocracking naphtha to ethane and propane, and polyethylene production were also in the top ten.”
Top sustainability issues “of interest were emerging carbon capture technologies and life cycle assessment of bio-feedstocks and biofuels reflecting the need for such technologies to meet the net-zero targets set by refining and petrochemical operating companies,” Charlesworth added.
Assessing critical technologies
PEP, which has been running for more than 60 years, conducts an annual survey among its more than 40 subscribing companies, ensuring that its reports provide independent and relevant techno-economic assessments of critical technologies. This year’s subjects included processes related to energy transition and net-zero; greener energy processes; refinery-petrochemical integration; and processes across key petrochemical, polymer and renewable product chains.
The reports provide an independent techno-economic assessment of three or more technologies for each topic. Each year, PEP engineers discuss with clients, monitor industry trends and research patents and other public domain literature to produce a list of topics on which clients may vote.
PEP is unique in its bottom-up methodology of developing a full design basis, process flow diagrams, heat and material balances and equipment one-line specifications for each technology assessed. Operating cost estimates for each product are developed, and Class 3 capital investment/capital expenditure is calculated using proprietary cost estimating software PEPCOST.
PEP also publishes 15 annual reviews focusing on single technology developments considered step changes in the industry or “hot topics” requested by clients. This year’s reviews have covered topics from capex location factors for over 30 countries to the use of ammonia as fuel for gas turbines. Additionally, PEP will soon publish a database of carbon footprints for over 2,000 technologies.
All models are fed into the PEP Yearbook database, which now includes over 2,300 technologies for up to six regions, updated quarterly with the latest prices, capex inflation and location factors.
Sustainable Innovation Driving Chemical Transformation and Growth is the theme for the Innovation and Emerging Technologies Strategic Program at S&P Global’s World Petrochemical Conference (WPC) to be held in Houston in March 2025. This is one of the many special programs in the week that will include an Executive Conference and parallel streams in all major petrochemical value chains. More detail at: wpc.spglobal.com
For more information about WPC, PEP and S&P Global’s other IPCA products, please contact Dr. Richard Charlesworth at: richard.charlesworth@spglobal.com.
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