At the 2023 FlexPO+ (now incorporated into the ADI Forum), Carlos Villa, R&D Fellow, Dow Chemical, joined moderator Uday Turaga, CEO, ADI Analytics. They discussed challenges with cracker electrification. Villa described how Dow Chemical was actively pursuing two major initiatives for decarbonizing its crackers: electrification and blue hydrogen. The electrification project, a consortium with Shell, was focused on developing an electrified cracker. A pilot plant was underway. However, commercial-scale deployment was not expected this decade. This was pending the wider availability of renewable electricity. This long-term vision emphasized a future where crackers were powered by abundant clean energy.
Concurrently, Dow was heavily invested in blue hydrogen projects. This “circular hydrogen” approach involved taking methane produced by their steam crackers and converting it to hydrogen. The resulting carbon dioxide was sequestered. Then, they used the hydrogen as fuel for the crackers. This was projected to reduce carbon emissions from their Canadian cracker by approximately 20%. They aimed to achieve net-zero Scope 1 and 2 emissions there, and a 40% reduction in the Netherlands. These blue hydrogen initiatives were critical and on a faster timeline. They played a key role in Dow’s goal to reduce its overall carbon footprint by 15% by 2030.
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