Economic Analysis of Power & CO2-to-Methanol Systems for the Abatement of CO2 Emissions From an Industrial Plant

Abstract

In this work, a Power & CO2-to-MeOH system is assessed, aimed at cutting CO2 emissions from a large-scale stationary source such as a cement plant. The assessed system comprises a cement plant with CO2 capture, a wind park for renewable power generation, a connection with the electric grid for electricity exchange, an electrolysis unit, the methanol plant and the final use of the methanol (which can be used either as a fuel or as a platform chemical). In addition, the system also includes hydrogen and CO2 storage units, to deal with the time mismatch between the intermittent renewable power generation and the continuous CO2 production from the cement plant with carbon capture. For each assessed scenario, the economic optimal size of wind park, electrolysis system and H2 storage with the constrain of converting the entire amount of captured CO2 is calculated. With the adopted assumptions that exclude CO2 capture from conventional methanol production, the results show that CCU allows achieving the highest CO2 emission reduction, while the CCS scenarios achieve the lowest costs. The breakeven carbon tax for the CCS scenario is about 49 €/tCO2. For the CCU scenarios to match the Reference Scenario without capture, the carbon tax should increase up to around 150-160 €/tCO2 in the chemical industry case and 320-330 €/tCO2 in the mobility case.