Integrated water electrolysis is a core principle of new process configurations for decarbonized heavy industries. Water electrolysis generates H₂ and O₂ and involves an exchange of thermal energy. In this manuscript, we investigate specific traditional heavy industrial processes that have previously been performed in nitrogen-rich air environments. We show that the individual process streams may be holistically integrated to establish new decarbonized industrial processes. In new process configurations, CO₂ capture is facilitated by avoiding inert gases in reactant streams. The primary energy required to drive electrolysis may be obtained from emerging renewable power sources (wind, solar, etc.) which have enjoyed substantial industrial development and cost reductions over the last decade. The new industrial designs uniquely harmonize the intermittency of renewable energy, allowing chemical energy storage. We show that fully integrated electrolysis promotes the viability of decarbonized industrial processes. Specifically, new process designs uniquely exploit intermittent renewable energy for CO₂ conversion, enabling thermal integration, H₂ and O₂ utilization, and sub-process harmonization for economic feasibility. The new designs are increasingly viable for decarbonizing ferric iron reduction, municipal waste incineration, biomass gasification, fermentation, pulp production, biogas upgrading, and calcination, and are an essential step forward in reducing anthropogenic CO₂ emissions.

The mixture of the ionic liquid 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium acetate (EmimAc) and dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO) was employed to dissolve microcrystalline cellulose (MCC). A 10 wt % cellulose dope solution was prepared for spinning cellulose hollow fibers (CHFs) under a mild temperature of 50 °C by a dry–wet spinning method. The defect-free CHFs were obtained with an average diameter and thickness of 270 and 38 µm, respectively. Both the XRD and FTIR characterization confirmed that a crystalline structure transition from cellulose I (MCC) to cellulose II (regenerated CHFs) occurred during the cellulose dissolution in ionic liquids and spinning processes. The thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) indicated that regenerated CHFs presented a similar pyrolysis behavior with deacetylated cellulose acetate during pyrolysis process. This study provided a suitable way to directly fabricate hollow fiber carbon membranes using cellulose hollow fiber precursors spun from cellulose/(EmimAc + DMSO)/H₂O ternary system.

A detailed kinetic model describing the consumption of key components and product distribution in the Fischer–Tropsch synthesis (FTS) over a 20%Co/0.5Re γ‐Al₂O₃ commercial catalyst is developed. The developed model incorporates the H₂O‐assisted CO dissociation mechanism developed by Rytter and Holmen and a novel approach to product distribution modeling. The model parameters are optimized against an experimental dataset comprising a range of process conditions: total pressure 2.0–2.2 MPa, temperature 210–230°C, CO conversion range of 10%–75% and feed with and without added water. The quality of the model fit measured in terms of mean absolute relative residuals (MARR) value is 23.1%, which is comparable to literature reported values. The developed model can accurately describe both positive and negative effects of water on the rate kinetics, the positive effect of water on the growth factor, temperature and syngas composition on the kinetics and product distribution over a wide range of process conditions, which is critical for the design and optimization of the Fisher–Tropsch reactors.

The declining cost of renewable power has engendered growing interest in leveraging this power for the production of chemicals and synthetic fuels. Here, renewable power is added to the gas-to-liquid (GTL) process through Fischer–Tropsch (FT) synthesis in order to increase process efficiency and reduce CO₂ emissions. Accordingly, two realistic configurations are considered which differ primarily in the syngas preparation step. In the first configuration, solid oxide steam electrolysis cells (SOEC) in combination with an autothermal reformer (ATR) are used to produce synthesis gas with the right composition, while in the second configuration, an electrically-heated steam methane reformer (E-SMR) is utilized for syngas production. The results support the idea of adding power to the GTL process, mainly by increased process efficiencies and reduced process emissions. Assuming renewable power is available, the process emissions would be 200 and 400 g CO₂ L⁻¹ syncrude for the first and second configurations, respectively. Configuration 1 and 2 show 8 and 4 times less emission per liter syncrude produced, respectively, compared to a GTL plant without H₂ addition with a process emission of 1570 g CO₂ L⁻¹ syncrude. By studying the two designs based on FT production, carbon efficiency, and FT catalyst volume, a better alternative is to add renewable power to the SOEC (configuration 1) rather than using it in an E-SMR (configuration 2). Given an electricity price of $100/MW h and natural gas price of 5 $ per GJ, FT syncrude and H₂ can be produced at a cost between $15/MW h and $16/MW h. These designs are considered to better utilize the available carbon resources and thus expedite the transition to a low-carbon economy.