Assessing the potential of carbon dioxide valorisation in Europe with focus on biogenic CO2

Abstract

This study investigates the theoretical potential and limitations of green carbon dioxide sources for technical valorisation approaches. The emission of greenhouse gases, especially CO2, must be rigorously reduced in order to achieve the European and global climate objectives. As CO2 is an increasingly valuable resource for industries and new disrupting technologies on CO2 utilization, the potential of CO2 obtained from different green and fossil sources in Europe is discussed for a comparative evaluation. Biogenic or green and fossil CO2 sources are classified according to their emitting processes and industry sectors, respectively. The CO2 potentials are then calculated from statistical data for CO2 generating processes in Europe, complemented and verified by relevant papers and reports. This study demonstrates the European potential of capturing and utilizing the biogenic and fossil CO2. In Europe, 69.7 Mt/a CO2 are estimated to be produced by biogas upgrading, biogas combustion, as well as bioethanol and other fermentation processes. Additionally, 437 Mt/a CO2 are produced by solid biomass combustion. This accounts for a theoretical potential of 506.7 Mt/a CO2 currently available, which is nearly seven times the amount of the current European industrial CO2 demand. The CO2 from biomass combustion is more difficult to capture and is mixed with impurities, which potentially reduces its technical and economic potential, whereas the 63 Mt/a from other high-purity sources are already partially utilized, e.g., by breweries or dry ice producers.

Techno-Economic Assessment of Thermally Integrated Co-Electrolysis and Methanation for Industrial Closed Carbon Cycles

“…The production of cement results in the emission of 0.54 t CO 2 per ton cement (IEA, 2018). According to Rodin et al (2020), the average per-site emissions of cement plants under the EU ETS account for ∼266 kt per year. As 60-65% of these emissions are related to the calcination process (CEMBUREAU, 2020) and thus are not directly affected by switching to renewable fuels, approaches for CCU/CCS are mandatory for the decarbonization of this industry sector.…”

“…section Cement Production) results in ∼350 kg of non-fuel-related CO 2 emissions per ton cement. According to previous reports (Bains et al, 2017;Rodin et al, 2020), the appropriate capture costs for carbon emissions in this industrial sector are 22-35 e/t CO2 , with a capture efficiency of up to 90%. However, this range is related to post-combustion capture and lower CO 2 content in the flue gas compared to that of the oxyfuel process.…”

“…Thus, the emission factors for the substituted fuels are related to those of natural gas at 56 t CO2 /TJ (Jurich, 2016). Referring to a previous report (Rodin et al, 2020), the capture costs for CO 2 in iron and steel production would be in the range of 19-83 e/t CO2 at capture rates of up to 90% without further specification of the underlying steel production process. As a further specification of the steel plant is not intended in the present study, an average value of 38 e/t CO2 is presumed to be the input cost for CO 2 in the techno-economic evaluation.…”

Potentials and Costs of various Renewable Gases: A Case Study for the Austrian Energy System by 2050

“…The CO 2 from biogas cleaning (see Section 3.1) is a suitable source for power-to-X applications (Götz et al, 2016;FIGURE 4: Costs for biomethane production via anaerobic digestion in 2020. Rodin et al, 2020). Up to 330 million Nm³ SNG per year may be produced by using the technically available CO 2 from the biogas upgrading process.…”

CO2 Utilization Technologies in Europe: A Short Review

“…The former is exposed to risk to pay the full carbon price/tax, the latter to risk that the CO 2 -based product may not be commercially competitive compared with conventional analogue. Average CO 2 capture costs related to industrial sectors were recently gathered by Rodin et al [161]…”