Material Cycles, Industry and Service Provisioning: A Review of Low Energy and Material Demand Modelling and Scenarios

Developing transformative pathways for industry’s compliance with international climate targets requires model-based insights on how supply- and demand-side measures affect industry, material cycles, global supply chains, socio-economic activities and service provisioning supporting societal wellbeing. Herein, we review the recent literature modelling the industrial system for Low Energy and Materials Demand (LEMD) futures, resulting in lowered environmental pressures without relying on negative emissions. We identify 77 innovative studies drawing on nine distinct industry modelling traditions and critically assess system definitions and scopes, biophysical and thermodynamic consistency, granularity and heterogeneity, and operationalization of demand and service provision. We find large potentials of combined supply- and demand-side measures to reduce current economy-wide material use by -56%, energy use by -40 to -60%, and GHG emissions by -70% to net-zero. We call for strengthening interdisciplinary collaborations between industry modelling traditions and demand-side research, to produce more insightful scenarios and discuss research challenges and recommendations

Comprehensive GC x GC chromatography for the characterization of sulfur compound in fuels: A review.

International audienceSince the beginning of the 2000's, comprehensive GC x GC chromatography brought a totally new way to characterize complex matrices. This disruptive technique is well adapted to fuels and rapidly gained importance in R & D laboratories of oil (and related) companies. Therefore, this analytical tool has been applied to many aspects of refining and especially the challenge of reducing the sulfur content in fuels. The present article reviews the use of comprehensive GC x GC for understanding the nature of sulfur compounds in refinery products (from gasoline to VGO) and their catalytic conversion through various catalytic processes such as HDS, AOTS, ODS. Various types of detectors (universal or specific) as well as FIT GC x GC have been applied and can be combined in order to get a better description of the S compounds in oil products

Thiotolerant Ir/SiO2-Al2O3 bifunctional catalysts: effect of support acidity on tetralin hydroconversion.

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Hydrodenitrogenation on Pt/silica–alumina catalysts in the presence of H2S: Role of acidity

International audienceThe effect of the support acidity on the HDN activity of a series of Pt/silica–alumina catalysts was investigated. Catalyst containing 1 wt.% of Pt supported on silica–aluminas with silica content varying between 10 and 50 wt.% were prepared by incipient wetness impregnation. The acidity was characterized by IR spectroscopy of adsorbed pyridine and isooctane hydrocracking and a good correlation with the silica content of the supports was observed. All the catalysts presented similar metal dispersion as measured by hydrogen chemisorption. The conversion pathway of 1,4-tetrahydroquinoline (1,4-THQ), used as model molecule for HDN study, on Pt/silica–alumina catalysts was similar to the one previously reported for sulfided catalysts, having as main steps the complete saturation of this molecule followed then by C-N bond scission to form completely denitrogenated products. Hydrogenation and HDN activities increased with the Brønsted acidity of the catalysts. As the thiotolerance of these catalysts does not seem to be affected by the support acidity, it is proposed that the 1,4-THQ activity increase would be related to a bifunctional mechanism involving neighboring Pt sites and Brønsted sites of the silica–alumina support

Bimetallic PtPd on zirconia catalysts for hydrotreating purposes

International audienceIn the framework of a two stage process for the hydrotreatment of gas oil, the use of noble metal catalysts in the second stage, where the H2S partial pressure is considerably decreased, was proposed. Thus, the catalytic properties of a series of PtxPd100-x (x corresponding to at.% in the alloy) particles supported on zirconia were investigated in tetralin hydrogenation and decahydroquinoline hydrodenitrogenation. TEM micrographs and EDS analysis evidenced the high dispersion of the monometallic and bimetallic composition of the nanoparticles. Whereas a promoting effect is observed in the case of hydrogenation reaction, the introduction of Pd suppressed the catalytic activity in C-N bond scission reaction. This poisoning effect can be simply understood as a linear effect of the segregation of Pd at the surface of PdPt particles. The effect of H2S partial pressure on the HDN activity was investigated and showed that for this reaction thioresistance is not improved by alloying