The chemical industry is at the dawn of a new revolution, in which processes must be electrified to reduce carbon emissions to reach the climate goals of 2030 and 2050. As part of the NXT-GEN High Tech programme, the Brightsite PlasmaLab is developing plasma pyrolysis technology powered by green electricity to replace existing carbon-emitting processes, with the ultimate goal of scaling up the technology from lab- to industrial scale. Plasmas offer several advantages over conventional chemical processes, such as direct heating of the process gas, high process intensity, and short on- & off-times allowing intermittent operation, making it compatible with the fluctuating supply of green electricity. As a first application, plasma pyrolysis is being developed for valorization of waste methane to produce ethylene, acetylene, and hydrogen. Because a sequential scale-up takes considerable time and would not lead to maturity within the set timelines, a parallel scale-up strategy is pursued where different scales of plasma technology are developed simultaneously, each focusing on plasma technology of differing levels of maturity. In addition to utilization of waste methane, plasma technology is developed for producing a range of other industrially relevant chemicals. Plasma technology can be competitive in the conversion of feedstocks with high activation energy and/or when fast heating/cooling rates are required. Applications include plasma fixation of nitrogen in air under formation of NO
x for fertilizer production, and pyrolysis of methane & nitrogen to produce HCN, a pre-cursor for acrylonitrile production, as well as conversion of CO
2 and recycling of plastics.
In this contribution we present progress on the parallel scaling strategy, where experiments at small (1kW) and intermediate (50kW) scales are coupled with 0D and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modelling to uncover the governing scaling laws required to scale up the technology to industrial scale (10MW unit size). These technological developments are combined with Lifecycle Assessment and Techno-Economical Analyses (TEA & LCA) to identify opportunities for process improvement as well as judging its environmental and economic impacts from an early stage.
