Trends in CO2 conversion and utilization: A review from process systems perspective

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) community has been struggling over the past few decades to demonstrate the economic feasibility of CO2 sequestration. Nevertheless, in practice, it has only proven feasible under conditions with a market for the recovered CO2, such as in the beverage industry or enhanced oil/gas recovery. The research community and industry are progressively converging to a conclusion that CO2 sequestration has severe limitations for the value proposition. Alternatively, creating diverse demand markets and revenue streams for the recovered almost-pure CO2 may prevail over CO2 sequestration option and improve the economic feasibility of this climate change mitigation approach. As such, research in the carbon capture and management field is seen to be shifting towards CO2 utilization, directly and indirectly, in energy and chemical industries. In this paper, we have critically reviewed the literature on carbon capture, conversion, and utilization routes and assessed the progress in the research and developments in this direction. Both physical and chemical CO2 utilization pathways are studied and the principles of key routes are identified. The literature is also probed in addressing the process integration scenarios and the performance assessment benchmarks.