Vici grant for Andrea Ramírez Ramírez
Andrea Ramírez Ramírez will receive 1.5 million euros from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). This Vici grant will enable her to develop an innovative line of research in the coming five years.
Vici is one of the largest scientific grants for individuals in the Netherlands.
Unravelling the impact of using alternative raw materials in industrial clusters
90% of raw materials used today in the EU chemical industry are still from fossil origin. Professor Andrea Ramírez Ramírez will develop a methodology to systematically analyse the impact of replacing fossil fuels with alternative raw materials in petrochemical industrial clusters. Such industrial clusters are complex systems with many and increasingly intertwined processes between and within firms. Intervention in any single process can affect other processes both at the local scale of an industrial cluster, and in the supply chains involved.
In a novel approach, Ramírez will adapt concepts from invasion ecology to assess the impact on resources, energy and costs at the local and the system level of replacing fossil resources with alternative raw materials in industrial ecosystems. She will also explore which strategies and technologies will result in the larger gains in the medium and long term. She will apply this approach to a model that mimics the Rotterdam Pernis/Moerdijk petrochemical industrial cluster. The model can later be adapted to study any (petrochemical) industrial cluster in the world.