COP28 is an urgent reminder that the world must do all it can to reduce emissions, now. From the global growth of renewables to carbon capture and storage, a range of technologies remain on the horizon. However, to avoid losing sight of critical UN climate targets, it’s imperative the petroleum industry takes action now to abate emissions. Preventing fouling is, simply put, the neglected fix. One that is relatively easy to implement.
Fouling at refineries
It’s time the petroleum industry tackles the issue of fouling head on, by adopting technology that can significantly reduce refinery emissions with almost immediate effect. Fouling at refineries, where the build-up of deposits impacts heat exchanger efficiency, is a global issue that directly leads to increased fossil fuel use and drives CO2 emissions up. Every second wasted adds more avoidable tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.
For far too, long maintenance at refineries has focused on reliability over sustainability. While this might have been a reasonable foundational pillar decades ago, the world has moved on. Now, sustainability must come first. Sustainable best practices should be baked into operations and form the basis of maintenance management. This approach, an industry-wide rethink, would do more good than any singular technology could. This is not a new problem. For over 130 years process industries have suffered from fouling and scale deposits. However, the urgency of finding a solution has never been more apparent. Whether we realize it or not, refineries have probably played a role in producing many of the products we use on a daily basis. The scale of the issue also highlights the potential impact of an industry-wide solution.
The need for decarbonization
The need to find tangible decarbonization solutions is all the more apparent given the UN’s recent emissions gap report. The UN estimates enormous cuts to greenhouse gas emissions are needed to reduce global warming, with a 30 percent reduction required to limit the global temperature rise to 2C above pre-industrial levels. The UN warns that, currently, they could fall just 2 percent by 2030, comparable to 2019 levels. This increases the impetuses of finding solutions that limit emissions and are quickly implementable, while longer-term technologies, such as carbon capture and low-carbon fuels, can be significantly scaled.
Read: WEF: $13.5 trn investment needed in key sectors to accelerate decarbonization
At Angara, we’ve conducted independently verified research on DecarbonX. We found that the industry could abate up to 400 million tons of CO2 emissions per year if every major global refinery took sufficient steps to remove fouling. The reality is, the technology already exists to do this.
Angara’s solution
Our solution empowers companies now to make a positive change to both the environment and their operational efficiency. DecarbonX, an Angara initiative, pioneers a solution with the potential to reduce up to 15 percent of refinery emissions in a matter of months, with those savings reaching 40 percent over 2 to 3 years. The tailored approach is underpinned by technology independently validated by DNV, utilizing physical and AI software to improve heat exchanger efficiencies, and in doing so prevents significant levels of CO2 emissions from entering the atmosphere.
Retrofitting existing infrastructure enables the petroleum industry to maximize emissions reductions while improving energy efficiency. Crucially, it also avoids the need to build more refineries. We face a critical juncture, one where accelerating the path to decarbonization must be coupled with the need to maintain vital economic activity.
Growth should not be curtailed by the drive to decarbonize and near-term solutions must be found as we onboard technologies at scale that are still being developed. We cannot simply turn off the taps, without risking serious societal and economic upheaval. That means finding ways to improve operations at existing infrastructure.
Increasing operational efficiency
As the world looks to increase clean energy capacity, we must grapple with another pressing issue. Globally, electricity and energy demand will only grow over the coming years as populations increase. That means the increase in low-carbon energy supply must also be coupled with new means to reduce the strain of energy-intensive industries on grid infrastructure. A quick and relatively easy means to do this is to increase operational efficiency.
Fouling directly hampers the heat transfer process in refineries, forcing equipment to work harder to maintain optimal operating conditions. Refineries with fouling issues need to expend more energy. This not only leads to greater harmful emissions but also unnecessarily uses up valuable energy. Dirty equipment can be up to 40 percent less energy efficient, comparable to clean equipment. It does not need to be this way. By investing in advanced monitoring systems, predictive maintenance, and innovative cleaning technologies, refineries can significantly enhance their energy efficiency. This not only translates into cost savings for the industry but also results in a substantial decrease in the carbon footprint associated with energy-intensive refining processes.
Right now, we need quick wins in the fight against increasing emissions. While a longer-term solution would be to remove emissions at source from refining, be it by carbon capture or low-carbon alternative fuels, that is simply not a realistic possibility at scale, right now. The reduction of fouling in refineries, however, is a scalable solution with global reach. Right now, we need international collaboration across the industrial value chain to adopt and better integrate fouling mitigation technologies that can help accelerate the transition to a low-carbon future.
Alex de Valukhoff is the chief executive officer of Angara.
About Alex de Valukhoff
Alex de Valukhoff serves as the CEO of Angara, a company that specializes in decarbonization. He brings over 30 years of global business and leadership expertise to drive the company’s innovative decarbonization mission. Under his helm, Angara has introduced patented technologies, whose goal is to address emissions for key industry players by removing fouling from heat exchangers.
His successful track record includes transformative roles at energy solutions provider Aggreko and industrial company Lafarge. Additionally, he holds an MBA from ESCP Business School in Paris.
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