Sustainability analysis framework based on global market dynamics: A carbon capture and utilization industry case

Abstract

Carbon capture and utilization (CCU) is attracting much attention as an option for reducing global CO2 emission since it can convert CO2 into more stable and valuable products. One of the most important issues in CCU research is the balance between the global market demand and the supply of the products which can be produced from CO2. However, the majority of previous research did not consider the product supply from the existing plants, and the price reduction caused by the additional supply from CCU processes to be built. To this end, in this work, a systematic analysis framework is proposed to identify optimal deployment strategy for CCU industry with the considerations for global market conditions. To demonstrate the application of the proposed framework, several case studies are designed and performed using the following design variables: time, CO2 processing scale, objective function, and level of market competition. In these case studies, the following representative CCU products are considered, which are obtained from chemical conversion of CO2: gasoline, diesel, methanol, dimethyl ether, dimethyl carbonate and succinic acid. Our analysis results showed that the optimal product portfolio for CCU industry exhibits a complex nonlinear temporal evolution with methanol and dimethyl ether being the best product for the short-term and long-term, respectively. It was also shown that the proposed framework can be used to systematically calculate the maximum capacity of CCU industry, which was estimated to be approximately 350 Mton CO2/yr by the calendar year of 2050 given the current levels of CCU technologies.