Prof.dr. André Bardow | ETH Zurich
Power to the plastics! A systems perspective on a sustainable chemical industry
Our current linear way of producing chemicals is unsustainable. The chemical industry needs to move away from its current fossil basis to renewable resources for energy and raw materials. Here, electrochemistry offers the potential to harvest the recent advances in renewable electricity generation for chemicals production.
In this presentation, we will analyze the potential role of electrochemical conversion in a future sustainable chemical industry. For this purpose, we will discuss promising processes to exploit electrons for chemicals production as well as the resources needs. The resulting optimized processes are then integrated into a bottom-up model of the chemical industry. A particular focus will be on plastics as the main user of carbon-based chemicals. The industry-wide model allows us to resolve trade-offs and potential synergies between electrochemical conversion and alternative pathways based on biomass and waste recycling. Thereby, we can identify promising pathways leading towards a chemical industry within the planetary boundaries.
Biography
André Bardow is full professor for Energy and Process Systems Engineering at ETH Zurich since 2020. Previously, he was a professor and head of the Institute of Technical Thermodynamics at RWTH Aachen University (2010-2020) and associate professor at TU Delft (2007-2010). He was also in part-time director of the Institute for Energy and Climate Research (IEK-10) at Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany (2017-2022). He was a visiting professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara (2015/16). He earned his Ph.D. degree at RWTH Aachen University.
Prof. Bardow is a fellow of the Royal Chemical Society and chairs the Technical Committee for Thermodynamics of VDI – The Association of German Engineers. He received the Recent Innovative Contribution Award of the CAPE-Working Party of the European Federation of Chemical Engineering (EFCE) in 2019, and the PSE Model-Based Innovation (MBI) Prize by Process Systems Enterprise in 2018. He was the first recipient of the Covestro Science Award. In 2009, he received the Arnold-Eucken-Award of the VDI-Society for Chemical Engineering (GVC). He is the recipient of RWTH’s “FAMOS für Familie” award for family-friendly leadership, and of teaching awards at RWTH and TU Delft.