g o v e r n m e n t & p o l i c y
GETTING A GRIP ON WASTED ENERGY DOE identifies six chemical industry process chains as key to cutting energy use
Jeff Johnson C&EN Washington
I n a single year, the U.S. chemical industry burns up about 6 quadrillion Btu of energy. That works out to 7%
of all domestic energy used and 25% of the energy used in all manufacturing, says a new report by the Department of Energy.
Making the chemical sector more energy efficient and cutting its $29 billion annual energy bill is the goal of a DOE program under which the report was prepared.
"Energy & Environmental Profile of the U.S. Chemical Industry" was developed by the DOE Office of Industrial Technologies (OIT), which will use the report to guide decisionmakers in better determining which energy-reducing projects should be funded through DOE's large grant-making program.
Lou Sousa, OITs director of communication, says the data and report will serve as a benchmark for energy use in the chemical industry. The report also provides pollution emissions data based on several Environmental Protection Agency emissions reports. But its main focus is on energy.
The report is actually a compilation of federal, trade association, and industry-specific information, Sousa says, noting that the report was peer reviewed by industry engineers before being released.
OIT spends about $170 million a year in 50-50 matching grants to nine industrial sectors for pilot projects that cut energy use as well as reduce pollution, according to Sousa. The nine areas— steel, aluminum, metal casting, forest products, glass, mining, agriculture, chemicals, and petroleum—are high energy users and are critical to the U.S. and world economy. Energy-use analyses, like the new one for chemical com
panies, have been completed for four other sectors, Sousa notes, among them petroleum refining.
Last year, OIT conducted its second round of grants for chemical industry projects and provided about $11 million
Most energy use for chemical processes is from six chemical chains
Agricultural fertilizers Ethylene Benzene/toluenefcylene Caustics Propylene Butadiene
TOTAL ALL PROCESS ENERGY
Energy use* (trillion Btu per year)
424 406 400 291
80 45
1,646 3,034
% process energy use
14.0% 13.4 13.2 9.6 2.6 1.5
54.3% 100%
Note: Chemical chains include all associated derived products from a primary starting compound, a 1997 estimates. Source: Department of Energy
in matching funds for eight chemical industry-related, three-year projects. The projects covered four areas—materials of construction, separations, catalysis, and computational chemistry—and all were tightly tied to manufacturing "• processes.
For example, one project funds development of a new material— iron aluminide—that holds out the hope of eliminating soot and carbon formation from ethylene furnace tubes, which is a major cause of plant shutdowns, according to DOE (C&EN, Jan. 3, page 17).
The new report will better hone OIT decisions. It identifies six chemical production processes that have the greatest opportunity for energy-use reductions. These are processes to make and use ethylene, propylene, benzene-toluene-xylene (BTX), butadiene, agricultural chemicals/fertilizers, and caustics.
The report refers to them as chains, and estimates that these
processes consume 1,646 trillion Btu a year, about half of the total process energy used by the chemical industry.
Using ethylene as an example, the chain idea works like this: Nearly half of ethylene production is feedstock for polyethylene, one of the most highly used plastics. Ethylene also is used to manufacture ethylene dichloride, which is used for polyvinyl chloride, as well as ethylene oxide, which is used for ethylene glycol and polyester, the report notes.
The report provides data on energy use and production for these three products that spring from ethylene. Also presented are process flow charts and text detailing manufacturing processes for
each of these product chains, with an emphasis on energy used and wasted.
Looking at three of the other chains in the report, agricultural chemicals account for the most total energy consumed, primarily for ammonia production, which is a low-yield, inefficient process, the report says. Propylene, on the other hand, produces large amounts of chemical products with relatively little energy consumption, according to DOE's analysis. For the BTX chain, production of ethyl benzene and styrene account for the largest amount of energy con
sumed, most of which is attributed to styrene production.
The 220-page report attempts to examine each of the process chains in-
Organic chemical makers buy most fuel, electricity
Soaps & cleaners Other
3% 4% Pharmaceuticals
lultural micals 9%
Organic chemicals
34%
Plastics synthetics
19% Inorganic chemicals
25%
1997 chemical Industry spending on fuel and electricity * $29 billion
Source: Department of Energy
JULY 24,2000 C&EN 3 1
g o v e r n m e n t & p o l i c y Ws:^
depth as well as provide generic information about chemical manufacturing. It notes, for instance, that most energy consumption is for production of organic and inorganic chemicals.
Among processes common to most of the chains, distillation and separation, steam cracking/reforming, and catalytic oxidation are the biggest hitters in terms of consuming large amounts of energy, notes report author Joan Pel-legrino, a researcher and consultant working for Energetics Inc., Columbia, Md., which prepared the report.
To identify the chains where the greatest energy-reduction opportunities exist, Pellegrino says, she relied in large part on a study by Argonne National Laboratory that compared theoretical minimum energy requirements needed to produce 31 of the 50 highest volume chemicals made in the U.S.
That study, however, was published in 1991, Pellegrino notes, and is getting old. It is being updated, she says, in a report being prepared by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, which will be incorporated into DOE's analysis. Informa
tion from all these reports must be tempered with a good dose of reality.
For instance, despite energy inefficiencies, a company is unlikely to tear down a large distillation facility that has been in long and untroubled use, she says. Instead, when process equipment is due to be changed, companies look more favorably on changes that result in better energy efficiency.
In that sense, the report may serve as a guide when chemical engineers are making process modifications and capital spending decisions, Pellegrino and Sousa say. In particular, it can be used as a tool for comparison since it supplies energy-use figures by process, allowing engineers to examine a specific company's energy use and compare it to a theoretical consumption range.
Along with the process information, the report couples data on economics, energy consumption, and environmental emissions for the chemical industry. The information was culled from scattered sources in the Commerce and Energy Departments, the American Chemistry Council, EPA, and elsewhere.
The report shows that the chemical industry produces 70,000 different products, yet most of them are not highly visible since they serve as feedstocks for other products. In fact, about 30% of chemical products are raw materials for other manufacturers, and the chemical industry itself consumes 24% of the chemicals it makes.
The U.S. is the world's largest chemical producer, accounting for 25% of the $1.5 trillion global chemical market, according to the report. The U.S. is the second largest exporter of chemicals, behind Germany, and the U.S. exports about 15% of total world trade.
Overall, the chemical industry has made significant improvements in energy efficiency over the past two decades, the report says. Energy consumed for heat and power per unit of production output declined by more than 39% between 1974 and 1995, a trend the report says began with the oil crisis of 1973.
However, since the late 1980s efficiency improvements have been flat, primarily because of the availability of inexpen-
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sive energy for heat and power, the report says. When energy prices are low, the report stresses, capital investments for energy efficiencies are far less attractive than investments made to increase market share.
Indeed, Pellegrino says industries want a two-year payback on capital investments, and money spent for energy improvements may look good economically on its own but can fall flat when compared with other economically driven investments.
The same problem has plagued capital investments for pollution prevention, which was demonstrated at a large project at Dow Chemicars Midland, Mich., facility. At Dow, a detailed examination of plant processes found several projects that would cut sizable amounts of waste and emissions as well as offer an average annual rate of return of 180% on
Chemical industry output has risen 75% as energy use per unit has fallen Index 1974 =100 200
the investment to clean them up. But the improvements had been ignored because they were too small and insignificant to be given a priority by corporate engineers (C&EN, Sept. 13,1999, page 22).
Chemical industry energy improvements achieved over the past two decades came from aggressive energy management and housekeeping pro
grams, the report says, which were instituted in the 1970s. They are now integral parts of operations at many firms. Among improvements were cogener-ation projects where energy is generated through manufacturing processes, the report says. In some sectors, such as the manufacture of organic chemicals and phosphate fertilizers, electricity cogeneration matches levels of purchased power.
But the report says most of the low-cost, high-return energy investments have
been made. Further gains will require more dramatic changes in process design and in innovative R&D solutions, such as projects funded through industry-government collaborations.
The report is available through the OIT Resource Center at (202) 586-2090. More information is available on the Internet (http://www.oit.doe.gov). M
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P H Y T O C H E M I C A L S
Industry output
Fuel use per unit of output
180
160
140
120
100
80
60 40 1974 78 78 8U 82 84 83 88 Wt 9d SW W
Source: Department of Energy, American Chemistry Council