Fraunhofer lighthouse project »ShaPID« – Shaping the Future of Green Chemistry by Process Intensification and Digitalization
Fraunhofer lighthouse project »ShaPID« – Shaping the Future of Green Chemistry by Process Intensification and Digitalization

Fraunhofer lighthouse project "ShaPID"

About the project

The chemical industry is essential to a wide range of industrial value chains, and is one of the main drivers of new product developments and innovations. Global challenges in the areas of climate protection, energy and resource efficiency, together with political and societal demand for green, sustainable chemistry, have led the chemical industry to set ambitious goals for defossilizing its production processes and establishing circular, carbon-neutral material and energy conversion. This transformation calls for major research and development efforts.

The nine Fraunhofer institutes participating in the lighthouse project "ShaPID” aim to provide targeted support to the chemical industry by combining their applied research to achieve challenging sustainability goals and, at the same time, intensify their R&D ties with one of the most innovative industrial sectors.

Motivation

The lighthouse project aims to demonstrate that sustainable, green chemistry can be achieved through practical technological innovations in process intensification and digitalization. Based on the internationally recognized "12 Principles of Green Chemistry”, new technology developments in four complementary areas are targeted:

  • synthesis, reaction and catalysis technology,
  • continuous process engineering,
  • modeling, simulation and process optimization,
  • and digitalization and automation.

The application of these new methodologies and technologies will be demonstrated in practice on a technical scale using three reference processes that address different product areas of chemistry with high R&D intensity and value creation:

  1. "Green plastics" (from CO2 and biogenic raw material sources to new polymers)
  2. "Green monomers" (energy-efficient syntheses of monomers from non-fossil raw materials) and
  3. "Efficient building blocks" (use of highly reactive molecules for atom-efficient synthesis).

All processes follow the path from green raw materials to green processing and green products. Process developments are closely accompanied by life cycle assessments (LCAs) and system analyses as well as REACh assessments and (eco)toxicity predictions.

Aims

The overarching strategic goal of the lighthouse project "ShaPID" is to establish Fraunhofer as a systemic research partner for green sustainable chemistry and to offer tech transfer services for methods and technologies of process intensification and digitalization from a single source. This will provide companies in the chemical industry and the associated sectors with targeted support in implementing green and efficient chemical processes.