(226e) A Sustainable Chemical Industry May Imply Dispersed Manufacturing

A SUSTAINABLE CHEMICAL INDUSTRY MAY IMPLY DISPERSED MANUFACTURING

E. L. Cussler and Douglas G. Tiffany

Departments of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, and of

Agricultural Economics

University of Minnesota, Minneapolis MN 55455

     A “sustainable chemical industry” implies using renewable feeds, especially those derived from agriculture.  The ease of doing so depends on the amount of chemical produced.  For example, antibiotics like penicillin already use agricultural waste products as a feed.  The amount of antibiotic produced is tiny relative to commodity chemicals like olefins, and the transportation cost of transporting this high value- added product to market is minor.  Thus the production of antibiotics will remain centralized, as it is now.

     In contrast, the production of fuels from biomass will involve huge amount of feed and of product of much less value per kilo than antibiotics.  Transportation costs of moving both feed and fuel will be major.  As a result, the production of fuels will probably involve many smaller plants, whose lower efficiency is balanced by lower costs of transportation.

     Thus a sustainable chemical industry may involve dispersed manufacture, rather than the highly centralized plants characteristic of today’s industry.  This paper will discuss such a future for ammonia, the key chemical fertilizer, which can be made from air, water, and wind power.  We will describe what such a chemical plant could look like, and the advantages and debits of such dispersed manufacture.