Membranes And Catalysts Beyond Economic and Technological Hurdles

ended

The MACBETH consortium provides a breakthrough technology for advanced downstream processing by combining catalytic synthesis with the corresponding separation units in a single highly efficient catalytic membrane reactor (CMR). This disruptive technology has the ability to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) of large volume industrial process by up to 45 %. Additionally, resource and energy efficiency will be increased by up to 70%. The revolutionary new reactor design will not only guarantee substantially smaller and safer production plants, but has also a tremendous competitive advantage since CAPEX is decreased by up to 50% and OPEX by up to 80%. The direct industrial applicabilty will be demonstrated by the long term operation of TRL 7 demo plants for the highly relevant and large scale processes: hydroformylation, hydrogen production, propane dehydrogenation. The confidence of the MACBETH consortium to reach its highly ambitious goals are underlined by two special extensions that go well beyond the ordinary scope of an EU project: 1) Transfer of CMR technology to biotechnology: Within MACBETH we will demonstrate that starting from building blocks of TRL 5 (not from a TRL 5 pilot plant), that fit the requirements of selective enzymatical cleavage of fatty acids with the combined support and system knowledge of the experienced CMR partners, a TRL 7 demo plant will be established and operated 2) Creation of the spin-off European “Lighthouse Catalytic Membrane Reactors” (LCMR) within MACBETH: A European competence center for CMR will be established already within the MACBETH project with an actual detailed business plan including partner commitment. These efforts will ultimately lead to the foundation of the “Lighthouse Catalytic Membrane Reactors” (LCMR) that will provide access to the combined knowledge of the MACBETH project .