BASF to build world’s most powerful heat pump
18th October 2024
GERMANY: Chemical manufacturer BASF has received €310m from the German government for the construction of what is described as the world’s most powerful industrial heat pump.
The heat pump will use waste heat from steam cracker for CO2-free steam production at BASF’s Ludwigshafen site. Construction is due to start in Q1 of 2025 and scheduled to be commissioned in 2027.
“The planned plant will be the first of its kind to be used for steam generation – there are no comparable industrial pilot projects anywhere in the world,” claimed BASF SE chairman Markus Kamieth.
The planned heat pump will have a capacity of up to 500,000 tonnes of steam per year. The waste heat, which is used as a thermal energy source, is generated during the cooling and cleaning of process gases in one of the two steam crackers at the site.
In addition to electricity, steam is one of the most important energy sources in the chemical industry. The Ludwigshafen site primarily uses it as process steam for production – for drying products, heating reactors, and for distillation, among other things.
In the past year, BASF used about 14 million tonnes of steam in Ludwigshafen. By means of heat recovery from production facilities, BASF already meets half of the steam requirements at its main site using a low-carbon process. The other roughly 50% is currently generated by gas and steam power plants.
Powered by electricity from renewable energy, the CO2-free steam is to be used in the production of formic acid. Here, the heat pump has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 98%. A smaller proportion of the CO2-free steam is supplied to other BASF production plants via the steam network at the site. In total, the heat pump will reduce greenhouse gas emissions at the company’s headquarters by up to 100,000 tonnes per year.
The German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action is contributing up to around €310m to the project as part of the Carbon Contracts for Difference funding programme.
