Institute News: February 2024

RAPID Manufacturing Institute Receives Renewed DOE Funding to Support Decarbonization of Chemical Manufacturing

AIChE’s Rapid Advancement in Process Intensification Deployment (RAPID) Manufacturing Institute — one of the U.S. Dept. of Energy’s (DOE’s) Manufacturing USA institutes — has received a funding renewal from DOE’s Industrial Efficiency and Decarbonization Office (IEDO). The five-year, $40 million investment by DOE will propel research, development, and demonstrations (RD&D) of advanced process technologies to enable more-resilient, lower-cost, and reduced carbon footprint manufacturing in the process industries. This includes the production of chemicals and fuels, which account for more than a third of all U.S. industrial emissions and energy consumption.

RAPID’s work will rethink traditional unit operations by transitioning them to efficient, integrated processes via advanced reactors and separators that can use low-carbon energy sources and sustainable feedstocks. Developing and deploying sustainable feedstocks are key priorities of DOE, and RAPID’s work will align with DOE’s Clean Fuels & Products Shot — the Energy Earthshot initiative focused on decarbonizing the chemicals supply chain by advancing cost-effective technologies that use alternative sources of carbon.

This next phase of work will expand on the core competencies that RAPID has developed. These include improving centralized processing systems to enable flexible, distributed manufacturing using process intensification principles such as combining multiple process steps (e.g., mixing, reaction, and separation) into integrated processes — aimed at reducing the emissions footprint of the process industries. A particular focus will be on difficult-to-decarbonize products, including specialty and performance chemicals,...