Specialty chemicals are currently at the top of the Chinese Government's plans. Due to the importance of new materials for several key industries - from e-mobility to renewable energies and semiconductors - this branch of the chemical industry is set to receive strong support over the next five years.

Climate protection can open up new markets for the chemical industry in China on a large scale in the coming decade. This also applies to European companies. As the chemical newspaper Zhongguo Huagong Xinxi Zhoukan reports, additional market demand of around 1.4 trillion Chinese yuan (about 222 billion dollars) will arise for several specific specialty chemicals needed for climate change.

The 4th ‘China International Import Expo (CIIE)’ showed where the chemical industry in China is heading. At the beginning of November, while climate negotiations were taking place in Glasgow, keywords such as ‘low carbon,’ ‘green,’ or ‘circular economy’ also dominated the presentations of Chinese and international chemical companies at the Expo in Shanghai.

The cost of natural gas for industrial heating processes, electric power and HVAC is rising while emissions controls also grow more stringent. Engineers must adapt and learn how to better control the calorific value of their gas feeds to optimize industrial heating processes. Controlling your burn reduces consumption, costs and emissions.

Vulcan wants to produce lithium in a climate-neutral and CO2-free way. The company has now produced battery-grade lithium hydroxide monohydrate in a German pilot plant.

Optimizing electrochemical processes is one of the challenges in developing technologies for renewable energies. New research findings could provide assistance here.

The increasingly relevant climate change coupled with the worldwide static increase in energy consumption by industry and private households requires us to rethink. New climate-neutral alternatives are being promoted more and more. One of the biggest hopes in the field of climate neutrality is hydrogen. But what is hydrogen? How can we produce it and where can it help us?

Power-to-X is on everyone’s lips: as energy storage, alternatives to battery-electric mobility or basic raw materials for industrial processes, the conversion of green electricity into material form is a cornerstone of all defossilization strategies. But how realistic is the vision of fuel from the socket? A test plant in Lower Bavaria, Germany, shows that the necessary technologies have long been in the starting blocks.

Both Germany and Europe have set the goal of becoming greenhouse gas neutral by 2050 at the latest. This means that energy consumption throughout the economy must be switched to carbon-free sources. Hydrogen will play an important role here, especially in activities that are otherwise impossible or difficult to decarbonize - for example, in the steel and chemical industries, aviation, ships or parts of the transportation sector. One of the crucial factors for rapid conversion is the question of how the production costs for green hydrogen can be reduced to a competitive level.

BASF is working with authorities in China to use more electricity from renewable sources at its chemical plants. The company has just announced a particularly ambitious goal for the new Verbund site in Zhanjiang, in the southern province of Guangdong: The first plants at the Verbund site, which is currently under construction, are to be operated entirely with renewable energies.