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'Net zero' and other environmental issues will drive a busy decade in the process sector, says Dr Jenifer Baxter, head of engineering at the IMechE:
The next 10 years is about ‘net zero’ and how we get there. The scale of change that has to happen is often much larger than people expect, and I can’t think of a part of process engineering that won’t be affected.
We will see a lot more hydrogen, which has virtually zero emissions at the point of use and will enable a lot of different aspects of renewable energy. If we look up the supply chain, however, we are faced with some interesting challenges. Hydrogen has traditionally been used for specific purposes and has a market that delivers to that. We use a lot in petroleum refining, ammonia production, production of fertilisers and much smaller amounts in manufacturing, food production, transport and heating. This market almost entirely uses thermal reformation of methane, some from coal gasification, oil gasification and a very small amount from electrolysis.
We could start to see a change from ‘dirty hydrogen’ to a cleaner one, including investment in more efficient electrolysis. Wind turbines could also generate energy for offshore hydrogen production. That could then be compressed to move onshore for heating, put into the gas distribution network or used for fuel close to the coastline.
We might see an increase in renewable energy use in industry. We have very heavy industries such as steelmaking that have huge carbon footprints, so can we change the fuels that we’re using? We also need to start implementing carbon capture and storage in everything that we do, even steel, concrete and gas production. It can act as a transition solution as we get to better technologies.
There are a lot of companies looking at how they can reduce plastic waste thanks to our friend Sir David Attenborough. We’ll see more new ways of packaging products, materials with much-reduced impact on the environment and reduced waste profile.
We are already starting to see this change – seaweed packaging, for example, which can just go in the compost. We’ll see more manufacturing using traditional materials such as wood and paper, which have a lower waste footprint if not a lower carbon footprint. That said, plastic has a major part to play and it’s not going away. The medical industry relies very heavily on plastic, for example.
Throughout the whole process industry, the goal is efficiency to reduce the carbon footprint. Automation in particular is making process more efficient and we will probably see more of it, but as a society we need to make sure it does not go too far. We need to think about what it means for us as humans. There are a lot of positives from artificial intelligence (AI) and automation, but also areas where we need to be cautious.
Read our expert predictions for other sectors:
Aerospace
Biomedical
Energy
Automotive
Rail
Manufacturing
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