Carbon recycling – An immense resource and key to a smart climate engineering: A survey of technologies, cost and impurity impact

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In order to meet climate goals, both CO2 capture and storage (CCS) and CO2 capture and utilization (CCU) have been identified as increasingly important technologies for mitigating CO2 emissions that are difficult to avoid. In this work, the CO2 utilization, or more specifically, the CO2 conversion to fuels and urea, considering the large demand for CO2, as well as the CO2 mineralization are surveyed and reviewed. The content of this review includes technologies – all the way from the laboratory studies to the industrial applications – their current status, and future potential. CCS is included for a comparison concerning the costs. Also, aspects as the CO2 impurities and the effect of it as well as various requirements concerning the CO2 impurity are included. Many recent studies show that CCU, especially CO2 conversion to fuels, will play an essential role in mitigating CO2 emissions, while developed methods and technologies are not yet mature. More research work needs to be conducted to improve the process efficiency via developing catalysts and reducing the cost of producing H2 that is used as a reactant for fuel synthesis. Moreover, current literature also shows that impurities will affect the process of both CCS and CCU, while the work of studying their influence, especially on CCU, is still scarce. The cost of CCS has been estimated combined with impurities, while studies on cost estimation for CCU are still limited, and the cost, in general, is relatively high with the currently available technologies.