The irresponsible use of chemicals as well as disposal of toxic chemical-laden waste is a major hazard to health and also lays immense stress on the environment. Applying green chemistry metrics to chemical processes can play a pivotal role in minimizing the hazards. Experts highlight the need for incorporating natural resources in the process of manufacturing chemicals to minimize hazards of toxic chemical exposure to health and the environment.

“We need to assess the situation we are in. India has committed to reduce the carbon emission by 45% and eliminate 1 billion tonnes of carbon by 2030. That means we have only about 8 years to put the infrastructure in place to fulfill the targets committed to COPE 26 in Glasgow last October. We have certain difficulties where new technologies are on the table, few of them are on a pilot basis and few are industrialized. But we need to move into full scale industrialization and economies of scale to benefit from sustainable technologies like hydrogen. We have to take a multipronged approach, moving away from fossil fuels to other sustainable options such as biofuels or hydrogen. At the same time also reduce the food footprint which is existing and with the consumption going high,” said A. Mahajan, Vice President, Contract Management, Tecnimont.

Mahajan shared his perspective along with other leading experts at NextGen Chemicals & Petrochemicals Summit 2022 organized by the Indian Chemical News on July 21-22, 2022. The session, ‘EPC: Focusing on new innovations’ was moderated by Pravin Prashant, Editor, Indian Chemical News.

 “These challenges can be addressed if we deliver the projects in a time bound manner. That is possible only when we have EPC terms on the contract and we have to create an environment where we are quickly able to adopt technologies. Today the suppliers are very far and few and thus we have to rise above the value chain and deliver the projects,” Mahajan added further. 

“The future projects will have to display a balance between sustainable operations and financial burden. As India is committed to transcending into green energy, all our projects will have green energy. The focus will be on 3P that is Impact on profit, Impact on people and Impact on planet. Now we need to increase our focus on the alternate biofuel pathway and decarbonization, and produce petrochemicals. The substantial mix of bio-based feedstock will help in reducing the import bill and in the import substitution as prescribed by the NITI Aayog. This can be done in several ways to do it including the ethanol blending which is mandated to be 20% by 2025. Ethanol dehydration is very promising,” said Snigdho Majumdar, Executive Director, Engineers India.

“The ban on single use plastics will impact the projected petrochemical growth but then again every challenge is an opportunity. We can look at sugarcane, corn and other related options such as polylactic acid to produce the biodegradable plastic. It can help in replacement of single use where SMEs entrepreneurs can benefit from it. We also need to look at the circular economy, how to recycle our used plastics, depolymerization etc to use plastic intermediate to increase our yield.  For all our hydrogenation processes, we need to use green hydrogen or at least use released CO2 to produce grey hydrogen from natural gas. We need to focus on carbon capture. All the refineries in the country will undergo gasification in a big way as this is going to help them to reduce carbon footprint,” added Majumdar.

“We are already aware of the impact CO2 is making on the environment. Presently we are hearing about a 1.2-degree rise in the temperature. CO2 is coming from all corners of industries, be it refining, steel, fertilizers. Now all over the world there is a big focus on replacing fossil energy with renewable energy and green hydrogen is definitely the solution for this problem. If we talk about sustainable technologies from an economical perspective, there are challenges along the way. Today hydrogen produced from steam methane reforming route may cost Rs 220 per kilogram. Comparatively, to produce 1 kilogram of hydrogen we use 55 units of power, spending Rs 330. Therefore, the parity is not there and the reason why people aren’t motivated enough. Therefore, a lot of measures are required. We need to have renewable electricity generation at competitive rates and also the production site should be near to the electricity generation so that the transportation costs are saved,” said Parag Chepe, Chief Engineering Officer & Executive Director-Engineering, thyssenkrupp Industrial Solutions.

“The government needs to incentivize the industry by announcing the concessions. Another challenge is logistics and therefore, we need to develop infrastructure for the transport, usage of green hydrogen, and for downstream industry which is automobile industry. We also need to look at the supply chain in the EPC business, one of the critical factors. A lot of players who produce green hydrogen have challenges in the supply chain, especially in the manufacturing of electrolyzers. There is a need for an initial push from the government. We see plants being built in Australia and Saudi Arabia. India is lagging behind and must not miss the bus. We need to stay ahead of time,” added Chepe.

 “In terms of sustainability, we are racing against time and we are all together in this. Like any other race, we all need very good candidates for the future and a good training ground. As an example, BASF is at the brink of commercialization of technologies that could convert CO2 into methanol, whether it is glycerine to further the biochemical value chain, ethanol to fuel or ethanol value chain. These are good candidates but what they need is a good training ground and that’s where EPC comes into picture to help us get these technologies scaled up from the mini-scale plant to commercial scale plant to their experiences and learning, and also help us to look at some of the existing assets which are currently operating in a non-sustainable way to adapt and utilize these technologies,” said Amit Bansal, Director-Sales, Process Catalysts-India, ASEAN, ANZ BASF.

“Talking about specific technologies, we have catalysts bench-marked that can convert C02 to methanol and also do it an economical way and not just a shorter life time that you see currently. It also offers best conversion rates and reasonable process conditions as compared to the traditional routes. Similarly, we look at the pathways to convert the biomass-based feedstocks such as glycerine and bioethanol into sustainable aviation fuels and few petrochemicals. Catalysts are now available to be commercialized and taken into consideration for building new plants,” added Bansal.

 “When we talk about sustainability, all the discussion is focused on two terms. One is sustainability and second is emissions. Right now the focus is on finding clean sources of energy, alternate fuels, replacement of conventional oil and coal based fuels which have direct or indirect impact on the CO2 emissions. One way of tackling unsustainable fuels is to find the source which we can use consistently in our energy basket. India being the net importer of the energy, there are quite a few limitations with the gas based economy as the natural gas is not widely available in all the geographies,” said Atul Choudhari, Chief Technology Officer, Tata Consulting Engineers.

“Hydrogen is an important vector in the energy mix. People are talking about developing green hydrogen from renewable sources such as water electrolysis. There are several pathways to look at the sustainable green hydrogen specially with respect to Indian conditions such as biomass gasification. We did initiate certain projects where we used biomass to produce bioethanol which will be eventually blended into gasoline. However, there are challenges with respect to the cost, visibility, subsidy and other non-technical issues apart from the technology maturity. Plastic recycling is another area where we can produce the hydrogen through hydrolysis. Considering the abundant feedstock availability in both the cases, this technology is going to be sustainable in future. We talk about the deployment of new technologies and assets, the focus should be on improving energy efficiency. Green combustion, better fuels, check on emissions need to be taken care of,” added Choudhari.