The domestic petrochemical industry is one of the pillars of the overall industrial growth. The government has a way to make this industry continue to grow and be globally competitive. Acting Director General of Pharmaceutical Chemical and Textile Industry (IKFT) of the Ministry of Industry, Ignatius Warsito said, one of the strategic efforts carried out in line with current market trends is to accelerate the petrochemical industry applying the principle of a circular economy. "In the petrochemical industry, the implementation of this circular economy can be through an approach from the 5R concept, namely reduce, reuse, recycle, refurbish and renew," said Plt. Director General of Chemical, Pharmaceutical and Textile Industry (IKFT) Ignatius Warsito in Jakarta, in his official statement, Sunday (23/10/2022).

Warsito explained, the concept of reduce, namely reducing the use of excess materials and energy by making raw materials and energy efficient. Then, reuse is the use of existing assets together repeatedly, for example by using a shared utility system in one area. Meanwhile, recycle is reusing existing materials 

"The concept of refurbish is to extend the life cycle of materials or to use materials that are no longer used into something more useful, such as encouraging the use of waste as alternative energy for industry. Furthermore, renewing prioritizes the use of renewable energy and materials," he explained.

According to Warsito, currently energy efficiency has become a familiar thing in energy-intensive industries, such as the petrochemical industry.

"In this case, for the petrochemical industry, study cases in the fertilizer industry that can be used as best practices include efforts to substitute heat sources from high pressure steam (HPS) to medium pressure steam (MPS) in molecular sieve dryers," he said.

In addition, changing exhaust processing technology from the Cryogenic method to Permeable Membrane, optimizing exhaust gas (tail gas) as fuel, and increasing the isolation of the reformer or exothermic reactor.

On the other hand, the circular economy trend could also have an impact on reducing global demand for virgin polymers. Several companies have committed to reduce the use of plastic (virgin).

"This encourages the petrochemical industry to be able to adapt and build long-term strategies that can integrate the circular economy business model into existing processes," he added.

An equally important step is the use of renewable energy and materials. In this case, the petrochemical industry must be able to respond to global market demands related to the use of renewable energy and environmentally friendly materials.

"For example, the request to substitute some conventional plastics with bioplastics that can be developed through R&D of materials that are bio-degradable," he said. In fact, the use of renewable energy can be carried out in the petrochemical industry sector to substitute the use of electricity sourced from fossil energy.