Thomas Bagus, Dr. Stefan Glos, Nevzat Oezcan (Siemens Energy), Dr. Regina Hill (Currenta), Prof. Dr.-Ing. Roland Span, Prof. Dr. Valentin Bertsch (Ruhr University Bochum) and Dr. Rüdiger Franck (Currenta) at the joint project start in Mülheim for the spin project “CO2neichem” (Image: Siemens Energy)
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The project is funded by the Ministry of Economics, Innovation, Digitization and Energy of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia as part of the Leading-Edge Cluster funding for industrial innovations. The project partners of the project called “CO2Neichem” include Siemens Energy and Currenta also the Ruhr University Bochum. The funding has a volume of one million euros.
The subject of the SPIN project is the development of technologies for CO2-neutral, economical, efficient and reliable energy supply of heat-intensive industrial sites using the example of a chemical park. The energy consumption of industry in Germany amounts to around 700 terawatt hours (TWh) per year. Around 70% of this is process heat, which is required as process steam at temperatures between 160 and 500 °C. In Germany, only around 5% of this process heat currently comes from renewable energies. The energy transition therefore requires a transformation of the process heat supply.
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Heat pump and hydrogen-powered gas turbine
The spin consortium has pre-selected two technology concepts that appear to be the most suitable for the climate-neutral and economical generation of large quantities of process steam. These are a steam gas turbine operated with hydrogen and oxygen and an industrial high-temperature heat pump with heat and cold extraction. As part of the funding project, a concept study and an energy system analysis are carried out first. A detailed concept for a demonstration application of the favored system should then be worked out before the pilot project is finally implemented.
“The decarbonization of heat generation for industry is an important building block for a successful energy transition. We can only succeed in this if we research, develop and test the right technologies today. We are grateful that our project is being supported by the North Rhine-Westphalian Ministry of Energy and look forward to implementing it together with our project partners,” says Nevzat Oezcan, head of Siemens Energy’s Mülheim site.
On behalf of the Ministry of Innovation, Minister Prof. Dr. Andreas Pinkwart: “The chemical industry has immense energy and heat requirements. In order to be able to cover this safely and in a climate-friendly manner in the future and to keep our industrial companies competitive, we now need new supply concepts quickly. I am therefore very pleased that we can now support another project that contributes to the climate-neutral conversion of our strong industrial location.”
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“The project fits in perfectly with the Currenta sustainability goals and we are very pleased about the funding from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia,” explains Dr. Regina Hill, Head of Marketing Supply and Waste Management. “In particular, heat pumps and the use of green hydrogen play an important role in our strategy as key technologies,” Hill continued. As part of “CO2neichem”, Currenta will work with the project partners to advance the further development of these technologies – in order to ensure the production capability of the chemical industry. “For us as a chemical park operator, it is crucial that we create production conditions that are sustainable, reliable and affordable,” emphasizes Hill.
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