A sustainable integration approach of chlor-alkali industries for the production of PVC and clean fuel hydrogen: prospects and Bangladesh perspectives

Description

Yes / The chlor-alkali industries produce caustic soda (NaOH), chlorine (Cl2
), and hydrogen
(H2
) as primary products. In 2021, the global chlor-alkali market was valued at $63.2 billion. The
article evaluates the global aspects of chlor-alkali industries and prospects for Bangladesh. The
current production capacity of NaOH from the chlor-alkali industries in Bangladesh is around
282,150 metric tons/year (MT/y). The by-products, chlorine (Cl2
) of 250,470 MT/y and hydrogen
(H2
) of 7055 MT/y, are produced domestically. The local demand of Cl2
is 68,779 MT/y. However,
there are no systematic utilizations of the residual Cl2 and vented H2
, which threatens the sustainability of the chlor-alkali industries. The article prefigures that a 150,000 MT/y PVC plant can utilize
45.2 % of residual Cl2 of chlor-alkali plants, which would be an economical and environmental
milestone for Bangladesh. The residual Cl2 can earn revenue of 908 million USD/y, which can be
utilized to import ethylene. For the sustainable utilization of vented H2
, production of H2O2
, fuel
cell electric vehicle (FCEV) and H2
fuel-cell-based power plant are the feasible solutions. Thus, for
the long-term growth of the chlor-alkali industry in Bangladesh and other developing countries,
systematic utilization of Cl2 and H2
is the only feasible solution. / This research was funded by ‘BUET Chemical Engineering Forum (BCEF), 001-2020.

Links & Downloads

1. Roy H, Barua S, Ahmed T et al (2022) A sustainable integration approach of chlor-alkali industries for the production of PVC and clean fuel hydrogen: prospects and Bangladesh perspectives. Processes. 10(8): 1638.
2. http://hdl.handle.net/10454/19125
3. https://doi.org/10.3390/pr10081638

Tags

Chlor-alkali plant integration

Chlorine and H2 utilization

PVC market

Clean fuel

Environmental sustainability

Additional Fields

Identifer	oai:union.ndltd.org:BRADFORD/oai:bradscholars.brad.ac.uk:10454/19125
Date	22 August 2022
Creators	Roy, H., Barua, S., Ahmed, T., Mehnaz, F., Islam, M.S., Mujtaba, Iqbal
Publisher	Processes: MDPI
Source Sets	Bradford Scholars
Language	English
Detected Language	English
Type	Article, Published version
Rights	© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/)., CC-BY