A Pathway toward Reducing CO2 Emissions from the Industrial Sector

It is well documented that a concerted effort is required to reduce the threat of climate change. One vital component in this portfolio of solutions--carbon capture and utilization--has been stalled by significant economic and technical barriers. To overcome these obstacles, it is necessary to identify economically viable capture opportunities--targets that can serve as a driver to lower life cycle costs, increase commercialization efforts and provide an impetus for development in the utilization arena. This study presents a methodology for assessing the levelized cost of CO2 capture, compression, and transport from industrially-sourced capture to regional utilization (sink) opportunities. Industrial sources are targeted over coal and gas-fired power plants given industrial sources often have exhausts with higher CO2 purity, a factor that lends to a lower minimum work of separation and, hence, lower cost of capture. The greater concentration in CO2 results from combination of process emissions with those associated with stationary combustion. These industrial sources, together with a full inventory of geo-referenced utilization opportunities, serve as inputs to a robust cost model that accommodates for differences in source exhaust composition, flow rate, and source-sink geographical relationships. A case-study conducted for the US state of Pennsylvania yields a cost-based ranking of 47 industrial sites, whereby steel and cement manufacturing dominated the least levelized cost options, anchored by high CO2 exhaust content (14 - 33% CO2). Further, we find truck transport is cost-competitive with pipeline for small volumes (