BASF, SABIC and Linde have started construction of the world’s first demonstration plant for large-scale electrically heated steam cracker furnaces.

The plant will use electricity from renewable sources instead of natural gas and demonstrate the potential to reduce CO2 emissions of one of the most energy-intensive production processes in the chemical industry by 90 per cent compared to technologies commonly used today.

Steam crackers play a central role in the production of basic chemicals and require a significant amount of energy to break down hydrocarbons into olefins and aromatics. Typically, the reaction is conducted in furnaces at temperatures of about 850 deg C. Today these temperatures are reached by burning fossil fuels.

The plant will be fully integrated into one of the existing steam crackers at BASF’s Verbund site in Ludwigshafen, Germany.

It will test two different heating concepts, processing around 4 tons of hydrocarbon per hour and consuming 6 megawatts (MW) of renewable electricity/power. The start-up of the demonstration plant is targeted for 2023.

The investment costs for the pilot will be borne by BASF and SABIC and the demonstration plant will be operated by BASF. Linde is the engineering, procurement and construction partner for the project and in the future will commercialize the developed technologies.

The project has been granted €14.8 million by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action under its ‘Decarbonisation in Industry’ funding programme, to help address challenges due to current framework conditions and energy costs.

Yousef Al-Benyan, Vice-Chairman and CEO of SABIC, says: "Our vision is to transform our business and to help address urgent global challenges through efficient carbon management. This project holds huge potential for all of the petrochemical industry around the world in our drive for low carbon emitting processes."

Dr Martin Brudermüller, Chairman of the Board of Executive Directors of BASF SE, says: "BASF has the entrepreneurial drive to achieve the energy transition, and electrification of the steam cracker is very significant for us."

Meanwhile, Jürgen Nowicki, Executive Vice-President Linde and CEO of Linde, says: "This project demonstrates how global companies can successfully collaborate by combining their expertise in technology development, EPC execution and operation. The timely delivery of the demonstration plant will be a fundamental milestone on the path to making sustainable solutions available to the petrochemical industry."