Opportunities of integrated systems with CO2 utilization technologies for green fuel & chemicals production in a carbon-constrained society

Abstract

With the increasing trend of global climate warming, effective control of CO2 emission has drawn greater attention in the recent years. This has led to a significant challenge on the utilization of high carbon-containing resource such as coal. One of road-maps is the low-carbon and efficient utilization of coal-based resource with the integration of clean or renewable energy resource such as natural & unconventional gas, wind, solar, and even nuclear energy. To meet the demand of low-carbon solutions, the current focus is on the processing of carbon resource into green chemicals and fuels in terms of proposed concepts, one is to minimize the C → CO2 reaction during the processing steps, the other is to recycle CO2 via chemical transformation or the relevant carbon cycle. Based on the concepts above, a series of low carbon conversion technologies are analyzed and discussed for four integrated systems, including (1) integration of natural gas with coal to produce fuels & chemicals, (2) coupling of nuclear energy with coal or CO2 processing, (3) CO2 methane reforming for fuel/chemical production, and (4) integration of solar energy with high temperature CO2/H2O splitting. The results indicate that the integration of fossil resource with non-carbon energy will reduce the CO2 emission significantly; particularly when using carbon in the form of CO2, zero carbon emission can be achieved.