Abstract

Process Intensification: Producing More with Less

Daria Camilla Boffito, Canada Research Chair in Engineering Process Intensification and Catalysis (EPIC) and Associate Professor, Polytechnique Montreal

Economic growth while accounting for social needs, climate change and environmental protection are key to tackle the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN-SDGs) and accelerate the energy transition towards the electrification of the chemical industry. Green technologies based on cleaner energy sources such as biofuels, hydroelectricity, wind and natural gas are a global priority. Their implementation cannot only rely on existing industrial infrastructures but needs new resources and space. This represents a limit to the increase in the production capacity of existing chemical plants and to the development of new technologies. Process Intensification (PI) is a new archetype of the chemical industry that targets order of magnitude improvements to manufacture chemicals by either retooling existing facilities or finding new smaller, more efficient breakthrough technologies. Examples of PI technologies include HiGee reactors (e.g. spinning-disc reactors), alternative energy vectors to power chemical processes (ultrasound, microwaves, plasma), static mixers, and membrane reactors. In this talk, Prof. Boffito will show how PI still struggles to find a definition, despite the undisputable advantages. These include, for instance, energy, capital and operational expenditures (CapEx and OpEx) savings in the 20-80% range, and a reduction of emitted CO₂ eq. up to 80%. She will also explain how PI represents a paradigm-shift that, by a matter of fact will change the chemical industry in the upcoming years. Prof. Boffito will browse the available methods to intensify chemical processes, specifically those for carbon capture and utilization (CCU), and will explain why we need to apply them both to existing and new processes. Further, she will highlight how PI can contribute to attain the UN-SDGs.