Recent public funded projects

CAPTECH project

The CAPTECH (CO2 CAPture TECHnology development) project is a Dutch research project carried out by a consortium of 6 companies: KEMA, ECN, Shell Global Solutions, Procede, University of Utrecht and UCE. The program is running from 2006 until 2009 and studies the capture of CO2 from power plants. Aim of the project is to develop new CO2 capture technologies with power plant losses less than 5 % and capture costs not higher than 20-30 € per tonne CO2. The costs for CO2 capture are mainly determined by the size of the absorber/ regenerator and the amount of steam required for solvent regeneration. The project is financially supported by the Dutch Government (NOVEM) and is part of the EOS (Energie Onderzoek Subsidie). The CAPTECH project is divided into six different research programs and Procede is mainly involved in the SP2 program called " Advanced Solvents". This program is carried out together with Shell Global Solutions and the intention of this program is to find new chemical and hybrid (physical and chemical) solvents with a higher capacity and a lower regeneration energy than the solvents currently used in the gas treating industry.

In the SP2 program the solvent properties are studied fundamentally and these properties are compared with the chemical structure of the solvent. A fundamental rate based model will be developed including thermodynamics, kinetics and mass transfer, which enables to describe an absorption / desorption process quantitatively. The thermodynamic model used in this work is based on the Electrolyte Equation Of State (EOS) concept in which both vapor and liquid phase are described with an equation of state. This is a rather new approach in the gas treating industry because mostly an activity based model, like e.g. the Pitzer model, is used to describe the thermodynamics of these processes.

In this process model, all physical and chemical properties of the absorption solvent are used as input parameters. A sensitivity study is performed to quantify the influence of all input parameters / properties on the performance of the solvent. In this way new insights may be gathered which can be used to develop alternative, more efficient solvents for the CO2 capture process. In a later stage of the project the performance of these newly developed solvents will be tested in a bench scale unit.

More information about this project can be found on the CAPTECH website:www.co2-captech.nl

BIOCA - Biomass Streams to Produce Cellulose Acetate

Abstract

Cellulose diacetate was produced from hemp fibers. Two main stages were required to produce the product; pulp production (delignification) by soda pulping and acetylation of the pulp to cellulose diacetate. Soda pulping of hemp fibers was carried out under various conditions of temperature and liquor concentration. From a consideration of the Kappa number of pulps obtained, it could be inferred that the optimum condition for pulp production is a liquor concentration of 5-10 wt% NaOH at about 160 °C. These conditions produced pulp with a maximum Kappa number of about 5. The degree of polymerization of the cellulose obtained from pulping at 160 °C using 15 wt.% sodium hydroxide solution was found to be approximately 450 indicating that considerable degradation of the cellulose structure had occurred. This lends weight to the desirability of reducing the liquor concentration to the suggested range. The a-cellulose content obtained was over 98 wt.%. Cellulose acetate flake/film was produced from the pulp in three main stages; activation, acetylation and hydrolysis. Activation was carried out by mixing hemp pulp with an equal amount of glacial acetic acid followed by acetylation at 30 °C and finally hydrolysis to diacetate.

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Opslag van waterstof in bakpoeder

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