How to leverage your steam grid to build competitive advantage and decarbonise

Until recently, steam has been considered a low-margin utility, often sold off to other companies or organised as a side business. For instance, DSM spun out the utilities in the Chemelot complex in Limburg. The intent was to form an independent company providing steam, fuel, and water to the complex's players.

Considering low natural gas prices and a steady state setup, this served as a sensible solution for a long time. Now, however, steam has become a key part of the industry’s decarbonisation journey, both a source of emissions and a linking pin for many chemical plants.

Multiple reports also designate steam as the next big issue to tackle, one example being Decarbonizing the Chemical Industry by McKinsey & Company.

Energy use by medium across energy intense industries. Sources: McKinsey & Co, US DoE.

The impact of decarbonisation on steam

As the backbone of industry, steam is affected in multiple ways by decarbonization efforts:

When industrial players don’t fully consider the impact of decarbonisation efforts on steam flow, this can lead to problems further down the line.

Real-world scenario

An example of this was a company with a large network that had directly electrified a steam user, causing the flows to shift, which then led to additional condensation.

Gradual evolution required redesigning a 100+ ton/hour steam network, which included an external utility and nodes that produced and consumed steam. Steam quality was decreasing due to excessive venting.

Thanks to a live Digital Twin, the company gained an in-depth understanding of the current steam balance and could also conduct simulations of future scenarios, such as adding electrification. It revealed that bottlenecks caused by bypasses in piping would lead to additional venting instead of reducing it.

What can industrial players do to leverage their steam grids to build a stronger competitive advantage?

Best practice 1: Grant steam the importance it deserves, starting with a shared and detailed understanding

Primary processes have long been subject to optimisation and tooling that allows detailed insight into their workings.

While steam is critical to those processes, according to the leaders we interviewed for our report Full steam ahead: The opportunity for industry in decarbonising its steam grids, it rarely receives this level of attention due to its perception as a low-margin utility.

Choosing the right tool for the job

Decarbonising steam, however, requires a full system understanding. Today, people often manage steam processes using oversimplified or traditional tooling, which has significant limitations.

Such tools often lack network or end-to-end scope, leaving out optimisation opportunities. Static models developed in spreadsheets are rough and calculations are both inaccurate and insufficient for decision-making.

Our interviews pointed out the need to fully understand the system, especially when considering optimisation opportunities. This includes steam and condensate balances as well as what steam properties users require.

Understanding these factors enables you to identify potential opportunities, such as switching to a lower temperature or heat-pump-based setup for a specific element, as users may not necessarily require high-pressure steam.

Digital tools to the rescue

A detailed understanding of steam is the first step to identifying potential efficiency savings. Modern tooling, such as advanced process controls or Digital Twins, can provide insights previously inaccessible due to limited sensors and computing power.

“I think it’s good to understand your own system as well as possible. I know several mills where they don’t really understand their own steam system, how it works, or how it interacts. That’s one of the main things: try to understand your system. Make an energy or steam balance. Then you know exactly what is going where.”

Energy Manager, Large P&P Mill

Best practice 2: Widen the scope of your decarbonisation efforts to fully include steam and other utilities

As discussed previously, it's crucial to make a plan and start executing it within the given constraints. Due to their interactions, including utilities in such plans is essential.

A “whole site” perspective

Steam will now play a critical role as primary processes decarbonise. In certain industries, it’s responsible for up to half of carbon emissions and organisations stand to gain a lot from optimising it without touching any of their primary processes.

This is why it pays to approach decarbonisation from a “whole site” perspective, not as a separate primary process and utility decarbonisation initiative.

This transition from tactical to strategic energy efficiency projects is not universally adopted by all companies. One of our interviewees mentioned that even a project aiming to reduce energy demand by 50% was struggling to receive attention compared to other initiatives.

Considering not only the direct impact

This means addressing both the direct and indirect impact. Steam still has a lot of headroom to decarbonise due to inefficiencies such as overpressurisation or overheating, creating significant opportunities for direct impact.

Any analyses should also include the indirect impact resulting from decarbonisation efforts around the primary process. Otherwise, it might seem like a good solution for that specific problem but not solve anything on a broader scale.

Critical in this is a good project consideration, in which:

By managing the primary process and steam process side-by-side, we can reduce steam-related emissions while ensuring the correct properties of steam on sites under transformation.

Example: Naphtha cracker

One of the interviewees mentioned a Naphtha cracker as an example. Optimising the steam used in a Naphtha cracker is possible, but it will only truly be achievable if it’s not rendered void because the steam network can’t cope with it.

When the change in the cracker means that the steam demand is outside of the operating limits of the network (e.g., a lower limit on a safety boiler), you’ll end up producing the same amount of steam but just venting it.

“Unless you’re a very big project, resources are prioritized by Safety, Compliance, Cost, Revenue.”

Former Petrochemicals Manager

Wrap up

Steam plays a direct role in emissions and indirectly supports processes impacted by decarbonisation, such as electrifying steam-driven motors.

To leverage steam grids for competitive advantage, companies must treat steam with strategic importance, gain detailed system insights through advanced tools like Digital Twins, and adopt a "whole site" approach to decarbonisation.

This means integrating steam into broader energy strategies and ensuring that decarbonisation projects align with both primary processes and steam systems.

For more insights into best practices for decarbonising steam grids, explore our report Full steam ahead: The opportunity for industry in decarbonising its steam grids, which draws on interviews with 35 leaders from European industrial companies.