CO₂ Concrete and Chemicals - IDTechEx Explores CO₂ Utilization

As carbon capture technologies work to drastically reduce emissions, carbon dioxide utilization can provide a greater incentive for businesses to invest in them and put the captured gas to good use. IDTechEx's report, "Carbon Dioxide Utilization 2025-2045: Technologies, Market Forecasts, and Players", details the different processes required to make captured CO₂ usable in various applications, along with market forecasts over the next twenty years.

 

Carbon capture technologies are mature and have existed for decades, but with the expense that comes with deploying them, there is little incentive for businesses to adopt them outside of carbon pricing regulations or tax incentives. CO₂ utilization makes carbon capture viable outside of climate motivations because it allows the process to generate revenue.

 

 

Carbon, a key part of many everyday products, is traditionally sourced from fossil fuels. By replacing this with captured CO₂, a circular CO₂ utilization economy could be created while decreasing the amount of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere.

 

The two main types of carbon capture are point-source capture from industrial emissions (including industrial biogenic emissions) and direct air capture from the atmosphere. The captured gas can then be used in many revenue-generating applications, including CO₂-enhanced oil recovery, building materials, fuels, including synthetic natural gas, methanol, kerosene, and diesel, chemicals such as polymers, and biological yield boosting. CO₂-enhanced oil recovery is notably the most dominant application for CO₂ utilization, using about three-quarters of all captured CO₂ as of today.

 

 

The original CCUS business model, which pre-dates climate concerns, involved pairing captured CO₂ from natural gas processing with enhanced oil recovery. CO₂-enhanced oil recovery involves the injection of the gas into a mature oilfield to encourage greater oil production. Due to the CO₂ being permanently stored underground via this method, the carbon footprint of the oil is lowered, making it a more sustainable approach. While many new CCUS projects focus on pure geological storage and have governmental support through subsidies, carbon pricing, and tax credits, enhanced oil recovery remains an important example of how carbon dioxide utilization can strengthen the business case for capturing CO₂.

 

Profitable production of CO₂-derived polymers has also been around for decades. One of the pioneers has been Asahi Kasei, which commercialized a process making aromatic polycarbonates from waste CO₂ in 2002 (using captured carbon dioxide to provide the carbon and oxygen double bonds). Since then, the total annual production capacity of polycarbonate resin using this technology has reached about 1 million tonnes.

 

 

There are multiple pathways to creating carbon-derived products with CCUS technologies. Direct injection of CO₂ without the need for chemical transformations is one of the simplest forms and is used in mature applications such as enhanced oil recovery and biological yield boosting in greenhouses. Some carbon-derived products, such as concrete, require the transformation of CO₂ via carbon dioxide mineralization to form highly stable metal carbonates.

 

CO₂ is a thermodynamically stable molecule, meaning many of the CO₂ utilization routes require lots of energy. Thermochemical methods are the most mature for producing CO₂-derived chemicals, according to IDTechEx, but synthetic routes such as biological conversion and electrochemical synthesis are also being explored in search of reduced energy and costs at lower temperatures.

 

For more information on carbon dioxide utilization and carbon capture, utilization and storage, please visit:

 

Carbon dioxide utilization: www.IDTechEx.com/CO2U

 

Carbon capture, utilization and storage: www.IDTechEx.com/CCUS

 

For the full portfolio of energy and decarbonization market research available from IDTechEx, including downloadable sample pages, please visit www.IDTechEx.com/Research/Energy.

IDTechEx provides trusted independent research on emerging technologies and their markets. Since 1999, we have been helping our clients to understand new technologies, their supply chains, market requirements, opportunities and forecasts. For more information, contact research@IDTechEx.com or visit www.IDTechEx.com.