Coupled Techno-Economic Analysis with Life Cycle Assessment for Ccus Evaluation Techniques

Abstract:

An increase in the human activities since the industrial revolution has led to a number of challenges related to climate change. Researchers have attributed recent climate change to the increasing of greenhouse gas emission concentration in which CO₂ accounts for at least 75% of its content. Many technical routes have been suggested and studied to reduce, mitigate, avoid or utilize CO₂. Among these solutions, utilization of CO₂ through CCUS (carbon capture, utilization and sequestration) seems to be attracting the attention of large organizations recently since it builds complete overall CO₂ management strategy. One of the promising CO₂ utilization strategies is the CO₂ capture and conversion to valuable products that can contribute to the company/industry profit margin. Although many CO₂ capture and conversion technologies have been suggested in literature, in the absence of any standardized tool efforts are costly and time consuming to find out the most optimum CO₂ utilization pathway assuring economic viability. To tackle these challenges, a computer-based analysis tool ArKa-TAC³ (Aramco KAIST tool for Analysis of CO₂ Capture & Conversion). It is an evaluation tool that assists in developing an effective carbon management strategy through screening of multiple capture and conversion technologies while selecting the best utilization route based on certain objective function. The software takes into account CAPEX and OPEX for a selected carbon management strategy while reporting a full CO₂ life cycle analysis to confirm the CO₂ reduction level. This applicability of this software includes refineries, gas plants, power plants, iron/steel, cement plants and other carbon intensive industries. A CO₂ management case study will be presented using Arka-TAC³ to see how the tool screens different capture and conversion routes to come up with the optimum utilization route based on economics and CO₂ reduction compared to the business as usual.

Keywords: CO₂ conversion, CO₂ technologies, techno-economic analysis