(374b) Decarbonizing Industrial Heat: The Potential of Low Carbon Technologies in Chemicals Manufacturing

Decarbonizing the industrial sector remains a key challenge for reaching global emissions targets in the next few decades. Despite ongoing efforts of electrification and renewable energy integration in the transportation and power sectors, industry has been slow to adopt low carbon technologies because of its diverse set of energy-consuming processes and competitive international markets for its products. However, one cross-cutting opportunity stands to significantly eliminate sectoral emissions – the decarbonization of heat.

Industrial heat accounts for two-thirds of industrial energy demand and nearly one-fifth of global energy consumption. In the U.S., industrial process heat in manufacturing industries amounts to 8% of total primary energy use and relies predominantly the combustion of fossil fuels, mainly natural gas, coal, and oil. To achieve emissions goals in the next ten to fifty years, massive shifts in the use and deployment of industrial heating technologies are necessary. With the emergence of cost-competitive renewable power and revived interest in climate change mitigation in the U.S., there is significant potential for industry to transition to low carbon process heating through the use of bioenergy, CCUS, electrification, hydrogen, and solar thermal. Our work provides analyses that evaluate these low carbon technologies to determine their technical and economic potential in manufacturing industries.

This national analysis focuses on industrial heating in the U.S. chemicals subsector, which is the single largest energy consumer among all types of industry, comprising almost a third of industrial energy. The analysis specifically assesses:

• facility-level unit processes requiring heat in the production of high energy-consuming chemicals
• thermal energy demand at a spatial-temporal scale, modeled with a forward-looking time horizon
• the characterization of bioenergy, CCUS, electrification, hydrogen, and solar thermal technologies applied to industrial heating, based on resource availability and technical parameters, such as temperature, thermal efficiency, technology readiness level, and equipment lifespan

The presentation will provide a critical synthesis of our findings, with an emphasis on the technical potential analysis, where process-level thermodynamic models are integrated with national manufacturing energy use and technical equipment data to estimate achievable fossil fuel and carbon dioxide emissions savings. To this end, we have developed a model for thermal energy demand in select chemical industries, identified feasible low carbon technologies that meet process requirements and integrate into existing process systems, and quantified their decarbonization potential.

We will also discuss identified barriers, both technical and economic, that must be overcome to promote future adoption and will suggest a research agenda for addressing those barriers moving forward.