Ekkehard Schwab

Raw material change in the chemical industry

online lecture by Ekkehard Schwab on March 21, 2023, 3 p.m.

Moderation: Klaus-Peter Jäckel

The German chemical and pharmaceutical industry currently has a share of around 4.2% of the world market (VCI). Its carbon-containing products are mainly made from oil (72%) and gas (14%). At least 13% of the products are based on renewable raw materials. Coal plays practically no role at less than 2%. In total, the German chemical industry uses around 20 million tons of organic raw materials. The chemical industry is an energy-intensive sector, the most important energy sources are gas and electricity.

The raw materials of the chemical industry have been and are constantly being adapted. At the beginning of the 19th century, wood was the raw material. Later, coal changed the entire industry and growth accelerated. After 1945, oil became the globally dominant raw material. Currently, however, coal is (again) gaining importance in China and gas in particular in the USA. The lecture will explain the criteria used to select the raw material base at different locations. Technical processes for using all raw materials are known.

On a global scale, the chemical industry is the third largest industrial emitter of CO2 after steel and cement, with a share of 8%. The key to reducing this share will be the availability of "green" electricity and hydrogen without an atmospheric CO2 backpack. Increasing the amount of carbon used from renewable raw materials is reaching ecological limits.

Energy, our elixir of life – where it comes from, where it goes

online lecture by Ekkehard Schwab on 18.05.2021, 2-3 p.m.

Moderation: Klaus-Dieter Jany

Without energy there is no life. For thousands of years renewable raw materials, hydropower and wind energy were the only sources of energy for the development of humanity. Despite increasingly efficient use, the amount of energy available was always limited. This changed dramatically after James Watt's steam engine made it possible to exploit seemingly unlimited coal reserves. Later, technologies for oil and natural gas extraction were added. The excessive use of these Literature has now changed the composition of the earth's atmosphere to such an extent that serious climatic changes must be expected globally. The lecture shows which dimensions must be mastered in the global conversion of the fossil energy system to a sustainable one.

literature

Industrial Heterogeneous Catalysis

online lecture by Ekkehard Schwab on February 15, 2022, 3 p.m.

Moderation: Klaus-Dieter Jany

Heterogeneous catalysts are the backbone of modern petrochemistry. Their successful development requires the close cooperation of a large number of technical and scientific disciplines: inorganic solid-state chemistry, surface science, chemical reaction engineering and, last but not least, solid-state process engineering for reproducible production on a large scale. The aim of every development is a catalyst that can selectively convert the feedstocks into the desired product over a period of years, and this can be achieved using very different types of reactor. The latter in turn determine the external shape of the catalyst. Over the course of more than a hundred years of development history, a gradual transition from purely empirical to increasingly rational catalyst design can be observed. But even today, the complex multi-scale phenomenon of heterogeneous catalysis can only be fully described theoretically for a few simple model reactions.

Ekkehard Schwab

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last modified: 10.07.2024 18:59 H from N/A