Decarbonisation options for large volume organic chemicals production, Shell Moerdijk

In 2018, the Dutch chemical industry consumed over 800 Petajoule of energy and feedstock and was responsible for over 19 million tonnes CO2equivalents greenhouse gas emissions.  Shell Moerdijk is located within the Rotterdam/Moerdijk petrochemical cluster and is connected to other major chemical and refinery sites at Pernis and  Antwerp.

Multi-plant complex with multi-product processes

Shell Moerdijk operates a naphtha cracker and several downstream processes, including the fractionation of olefins and benzene, and the production of ethylene oxide, ethylene glycols, ethylbenzene, styrene monomer and propylene oxide. Shell Moerdijk is a multi-plant complex which also contains multi-product processes. These products and processes are described in detail in the report.

Decarbonisation options include electrification, hydrogen and CCUS

The report presents potential options for reduction of energy use and/or CO₂ emissions by 2050. Decarbonisation options for Shell Moerdijk include heat integrated distillation columns and heat pumps, heat recovery, process control, coalesce-filtration units, membranes (for gas separation), adsorption heat pumps, electrification, hydrogen as fuel, biomass to bio-ethylene process, methanol to olefin process, carbon capture and storage or utilisation.