Braskem to work with Coolbrook

The Brazilian petrochemical maker Braskem will cooperate with the Finnish start-up Coolbrook on an industrial-scale pilot project for Coolbrook’s RotoDynamic Reactor. Conventional ethylene crackers use furnaces to reach the temperatures of more than 800 °C necessary to crack feedstocks such as naphtha into ethylene and other olefins. Coolbrook’s technology is based on electrically powered rotors that would reach speeds of about 300 m per second, thereby heating the feedstocks with kinetic energy. The company conducted a demonstration of the technology in Geleen, the Netherlands, in December. The project is part of Braskem’s initiative to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions from ethylene production.