Identification and evaluation of most promising CO2 utilization technologies: Multi criteria decision analysis and techno-economic assessment

Abstract

Utilization of captured CO2 as a feedstock for the synthesis of valuable products offers an option for supporting climate change objectives and enabling a circular economy. Therefore, there is an increasing attention from governments and industry for promoting the further development of CO2-based applications. Given the multitude of CO2 utilization pathways that are far from equal, a comprehensive assessment is required to identify the most promising options for further development. This study aims to develop a consistent approach for comparing CO2 utilization pathways in terms of multiple criteria and scenarios. To this end, 133 utilization pathways were identified from the literature and evaluated using a Multi Criteria Decision Analysis tool, which is based on an Analytic Hierarchy Process, for three different scenarios. These analyses incorporated technology readiness level, global market size, global market price, CO2 utilization volume, and CO2 retention time as screening criteria. Also, three different scenarios, including Economic Vision, Environmental Vision, and Immediate Environmental Action, were considered to make a decision that reflects the preferences of different decision makers. The results show that calcium carbonate, ethylene, ethylene oxide, methane, polyethylene, polypropylene, syngas, synthetic fuel, and urea are the most promising CO2-based products with respect to the three considered scenarios. As a last step, a general framework was developed to calculate the minimum selling price of the selected CO2 utilization pathways to provide comparable economic results. The highest minimum selling prices were associated with polyethylene and ethylene oxide, where CO2 is incorporated in the respective production process indirectly through another reactant and the highest amount of hydrogen is required.