🏭 Capturing lime CO2

Good morning. Do you know any other processes that directly produce CO2? Not just from heat generation or burning stuff at the flare?

From the condenser:

· Making lime without CO2

· LyondellBasell's recycling thoughts

· POTD: submarine cables

Capturing carbon while making lime

Industrial gases company, Air Liquide, has announced plans to implement its proprietary "Cryocap" carbon capture technology at Lhoist's calcium oxide plant in Réty, France.

What's going on in Réty?

Calcium oxide, typically referred to as lime, is made by the thermal decomposition of limestone into lime and carbon dioxide (CO2). We keep that thermal decomposition going by combusting fuel (typically natural gas) to heat a kiln to temperatures of about 1000°C. You end up with a flue gas stream that contains CO2 from the lime-making reaction and CO2 from the heat-making reaction.

More context:

We need lime because we use it to do all sorts of things—most notably, this stuff is used to make steel, concrete, and desulfurize flue gas. If we want to make lime, at the global scale that we do, but without all of that CO2, and soon, you're going to need to capture CO2. It's a big problem. We make roughly 280 million tons of this stuff every year (and hardly any of it in environmentally friendly regions like the EU)

What Air Liquide is up to:

The classic CO2 capture technique is amine gas scrubbing. That 60-year-old process is based on absorption. All you need to know about that is that when things naturally absorb, it takes energy to make them desorb. Air Liquide's process is reportedly less energy intensive and based on pressure swing adsorption (with a d, not a b) and cryogenic separation. We have yet to see it in action in industry, so time will tell how effective it really is.

LyondellBasell's molecular recycling rumors

Petrochemcial company, LyondellBasell, is reportedly considering other options for its refinery site on the Houston ship channel.

Catching you up:

In case you missed it, LyondellBasell announced that they'll be shutting down their (only) refinery by the end of next year. The shutdown is really just an ultimatum—if nobody wants to buy the refinery, they'll just turn it off. In the meantime, the company is considering post-hypothetical-shutdown options should they not find a buyer.

What are they thinking?

The company's interim CEO said that the site is being considered for "further development of [their] circular business". The thought here is that some of the site's existing assets could be retrofitted to process depolymerized plastic waste. Chief among those assets are the many hydrotreaters (shown in orange) that you'll find at any refinery.

Looking forward:

The catalyst used at LyondellBasell's molecular recycling pilot plant apparently depolymerizes plastic waste into a pyrolysis oil more similar to naphtha. That would be helpful because the entire petrochemical industry knows how to steam crack naphtha (which makes platform molecules like ethylene, propylene, and benzene). Being located near a bunch of other steam crackers in the Houston ship channel wouldn't hurt either.

Some more headlines:

• Wood landed a contract for Esseco's chemical site in Wakefield, England

• BP is going to buy depolymerized from Clean Planet for the next 10 years

• C&EN's ranking of US-based chemical companies was just released for 2021

• Shell is getting ready to power up its cracker project in Pennsylvania

• Mitsui Chemicals plans to try to depolymerize plastic with a microwave-based technology

Product of The Day:

Today, we're breaking down submarine cables.

About 99% of the data crossing the oceans is carried by extremely long cables underwater. Today, some 436 of these cables (here's a map) enable the modern internet as we know it. They make the world wide web world wide.

As you might imagine, the kind of cable used to connect continents is a little different than the one that brings the internet to your router at home. The data itself is carried by optical fibers that have been coated with petroleum jelly (from refineries) as a buffer for bending stress (optical fibers can snap). The cable is then surrounded by a copper tube (to carry electricity), then a polycarbonate, some aluminum and stainless steel, then biaxially-oriented polyethylene terephthalate (BoPET) with acrylic adhesive on one side, and finally cross-linked polyethylene (PEX) as the outermost layer of protection.

That BoPET acrylic adhesive tape is marketed as Mylar by DuPont and PEX is made from HDPE.

In case you're interested:

• Course: We think of chemical plants in terms of unit operations. To understand the industry you need to learn about those units.*

• Podcast: Check out this episode featuring a former Global R&D Director at Dow Chemical about sustainability and circular economy.

• Tip: Trying to understand the stock market? The Average Joe boils it down so the everyday investor can keep up.*

• Article: It’s hard to understand the petrochemical industry without knowing in's & out's of the 'enes.

The bottoms: