BASF, on October 15, has received approximately €310 million in grants from the German government. The grants will be used to build the world’s largest CO2-free industrial heat pump for steam production. The project is scheduled to begin construction in the first quarter of 2025 and be operational in 2027.
Steam is one of the most important sources of energy in the chemical industry, mainly due to its efficient energy transfer properties and its ability to rapidly heat and evaporate liquids, which is essential for a variety of chemical reactions and separation processes. In addition, steam provides a stable heat source that helps to tightly control reaction temperatures, which can affect reaction rates and product selectivity.
From an environmental perspective, steam is cleaner than other energy sources, and its use reduces environmental pollution. Steam is also flexible in that it can be used for a wide range of processes such as heating, driving turbines to generate electricity, supplying heat, and performing distillations and extractions. Additionally, in many chemical manufacturing operations, steam can be effectively integrated with other processes to increase the overall efficiency of energy utilization.
Economy is also an important advantage of steam as an energy source. In many cases, utilizing steam as a heat source is more economical than electricity or other fuels, especially in large-scale production. For this reason, steam plays a key role in the chemical industry as an essential and important source of energy.
In 2023, BASF used around 14 million tons of steam in Ludwigshafen. Through heat recovery at its production facilities, BASF already meets half of the site’s steam needs using low-carbon processes, with the remainder currently supplied by gas and steam power plants.
Planned heat pumps could provide up to 500,000 tons of steam capacity per year, reducing greenhouse gas emissions from formic acid production by 98 percent. Waste heat is used as a source of thermal energy from one of two steam crackers at the site; powered by renewable energy sources, resulting in CO2-free steam. And most of the steam will be used for formic acid production, with a small amount of CO2-free steam supplied to other plants through the site’s steam network. The heat pump will reduce greenhouse gas emissions at BASF’s headquarters by up to 100,000 tons per year.
Markus Kameith, Chairman of the Executive Board of BASF, said that integrating new technologies into chemical production processes is one of the key components of BASF’s green transformation. The planned heat pump is the first facility of its kind in the world for steam production – there is no similar industrial pilot project anywhere in the world.
Green transformation is said to be one of the key strategic cornerstones of BASF. In addition to the use of renewable raw materials and renewable electricity, it includes testing and developing new technologies that reduce the use of fossil raw materials in energy production, thereby reducing the carbon footprint of chemical products.