By embracing recycling technologies, bio-based feedstock and carbon footprint reduction strategies, the petrochemical sector can not only meet its sustainability goals but also unlock new avenues for growth in a resource-constrained world. 

In this context, the leading experts from petrochemical industry shared the latest trends at the first session of second edition of PetroChem Summit 2024 titled ‘Recycling Technologies, Bio-based Feedstocks and Carbon Footprint Reduction in Petrochemical Processes’ organized by the Indian Chemical News in New Delhi on December 18, 2024. 

The session was moderated by Dinesh Chopra, Chairman, Neochem Technologies who outlined the industry's way forward: “Most of the countries are now struggling with heaps of waste materials and others are exporting it to other countries to manage it but we don’t know how far it will go. Whether it is an increase in sea level and temperature, rise in incidents of floods, and environmental degradation, we as humans have always found the solutions with new technologies to address our problems. From recycling the waste and bio-based feed-stock to new molecules and new applications, I am sure there will be new technologies that will help us find the solutions.” 

Dr. Samir H. Chikkali, Senior Principal Scientist and Professor (AcSIR), Polymer Science and Engineering Division, CSIR - National Chemical Laboratory, Pune said, “India produces 20 million tonnes of polymers out of which 60% is polyethylene and polypropylene. Global consumption is 400 million tonnes which is stagnant while in India it is 20 million tonnes which is predicted to grow further. At CSIR, we are working on converting waste plastic into fuel and value added chemicals. One of our projects focuses on developing the segregation technology for the plastic waste in Pune which generates about 99 tonnes of it each day. Generally, even experts find it difficult to segregate the plastics into various categories. We are trying to develop a segregator that has NIR coupled with AI technology to segregate polyethylene, polypropylene and PET. This technology collects the signals and separates the polyethylene and polypropylene in different bins. At the moment the capacity is one tonne per plant per day. There are a lot of pre-units where shredding, washing, drying is done and then it goes to the plant. Then there are two units, one is segregation and second is depolymerization. This is a futuristic technology yet at the lab scale. Though still not at the commercial stage, we are trying to improve it and have filed sub patents. We are also looking at how we can make the polyethylene from bio-based polymers.” 

Lav Kumar, Additional Director, Centre for High Technology, MoPNG said, “Petrochemical industry in India is mostly integrated with the refineries and it is very important for these refineries to maintain their profit margins and grow. Globally, 20% of refineries are getting shut down due to energy transition but in India the situation is different as we have still not reached the peak demand yet and we are coming up with more refineries. In terms of decarbonization of the petrochemical industry, it was identified under PAT Cycle 4 for energy efficiency norms. This is now being replaced with the CCDS system and the compliance has been declared by BEE in association with the Environment Ministry. It is going to be mandatory from next year. There are short term procedures and long-term objectives for decarbonization of the sector. For the short term, in terms of energy efficiency, we can look at the low hanging fruits such as benchmarking, declaring energy baseline and working on improving the energy efficiency, upgradation of machinery and using the AI-ML. There are mature technologies available in the market and need to be implemented. For the long-term measures, there is an offset mechanism such as biofeedstock. Another is CCUS which is a developing technology to offset CO2 emission. Players are shifting from the steam crackers to electric crackers and from fossil based energy to green energy.” 

Dharmendra Sharma, Managing Director, Mamleshwar Clean Fuel said, “At our company we collect the crop waste and convert it into biofuels. While we cannot replace coal, we can blend the fossil fuels with ethanol. A lot of coal goes into the electricity generation and the government has made the 5% blending of ethanol mandatory at the moment. Putting our efforts at Mamleshwar Clean Fuel, we collect the Parali (crop residue) that is often burned by farmers and turn it into bioenergy. We are compressing and densifying the biomass and preparing biofuel. We are doing the pyrolysis of the same biomass and converting to higher gross calorific value (CGV) fuel. Whatever C02 is captured by a tree in its life cycle it is stored inside and when it is used for biomass, the carbon footprint is far lesser. Similarly, the amount of carbon absorbed by the crops in their life of six months is higher than what is released into the environment when its residue is used to create biomass. However, despite the advantages, there are a lot of challenges in supply chain management of the agri-waste residue that need to be addressed.” 

Sumeet Malhan SM (Veteran), CEO & CTO, PRESPL said “A bio based feed-stock has many advantages such as being net zero. The agriculture residue has a half yearly cycle and it is carbon neutral. With agriculture activity happening regularly, the agri-waste will get generated and residue can be used for conversion into fuel and ethanol or methanol. In terms of challenges, the cost of pre-processing is huge as we need to process it before it is fed to the technology. Though the adequate availability of biomass from the field is thought to be a positive point, collecting it after harvest period and storing it without getting damaged is another challenge. If it is going beyond 50 kilometers then it makes no sense because of the expenditure but if you find a location that is somewhere in between the market and biomass availability would be great. There are many technologies available to convert the biomass, be it pyrolysis and gasification. We are closer to making breakthroughs but at the moment none of these are comprehensive. Steam boilers are ready made consumers of biomass and the industry that uses this steam energy can get a 30% discount over the traditional fossil fuel.” 

Vineet Bakshi, Director - Business Development, LanzaTech said, “When we say recycling carbon, we use the hydrogen and carbon dioxide for value addition to the facility and producing the carbon. One of the ways is to wait for the electrification of crackers as in the case of Europe where the project started 7 years back and is still in progress. We started a big steam project in the US where we are capturing the flow gases from steam crackers and then C02 for production of ethanol, which is a building block. We are then dehydrating it to turn it into ethylene. We are producing 55 KTA of sustainable ethylene and the project was approved by USDOE and U$ 3 billion of investment has been granted for the same. If you are converting this ethylene into SAF or a T-shirt, you are not sending back the carbon to the atmosphere. For Lanzatech, partnerships are very important as throughout our journey since 2005 we had partners who supported us fully. As an example, if we talk about agri-waste, there has to be someone who takes care of supply chain and then we can fit in with our technology and then some other partner will do value addition to ethanol. A classic example is that when we convert our ethanol into ethylene through the ATJ route, from lab scale to demo and field trials and adoption, a lot of partnerships are required.” 

PetroChem Summit 2024 themed ‘Identifying New Opportunities For Value Creation’ was supported by the industry associations including Alkali Manufacturers Association of India (AMAI) and Chemicals & Petrochemicals Manufacturers' Association (CPMA). The Platinum Sponsor was Somaiya Vidyavihar University and Gold Sponsor, Tubacex Group.