Technological innovations on direct carbon mitigation by ordered energy conversion and full resource utilization

Abstract

Coal consumption leads to over 15 billion tons of global CO2 emissions annually, which will continue at a considerable intensity in the foreseeable future. To remove the huge amount of CO2, a practically feasible way of direct carbon mitigation, instead of capturing that from dilute tail gases, should be developed; as intended, we developed two innovative supporting technologies, of which the status, strengths, applications, and perspective are discussed in this paper. One is supercritical water gasification-based coal/biomass utilization technology, which orderly converts chemical energy of coal and low-grade heat into hydrogen energy, and can achieve poly-generation of steam, heat, hydrogen, power, pure CO2, and minerals. The other one is the renewables-powered CO2 reduction techniques, which uses CO2 as the resource for carbon-based fuel production. When combining the above two technical loops, one can achieve a full resource utilization and zero CO2 emission, making it a practically feasible way for China and global countries to achieve carbon neutrality while creating substantial domestic benefits of economic growth, competitiveness, well-beings, and new industries.