CO2 capture in ethanol distilleries in Brazil: Designing the optimum carbon transportation network by integrating hubs, pipelines and trucks

The growing importance of negative emission technologies in the energy sector for a “well-below 2 °C” world by 2100 seems to be a great opportunity for biological carbon capture and storage (BECCS) in the Brazilian sugarcane ethanol industry, given the low capture costs of the CO2 produced during the alcoholic fermentation process and the potential to store and use the CO2 for Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) in mature oil fields in the country. Notwithstanding, previous scientific studies indicated high transport infrastructure costs as a major constraint for the economic feasibility of exploiting this potential. This work developed and applied a methodology to design an optimal sugarcane ethanol BECCS CO2 network (the baseline) together with two alternative concepts: one considering an inter-modal network of road and pipeline transport and another with a multiple-hub system. The results for the system's abatement costs, including sensitivity analyses for the best- and worst-case scenarios, ranged between 32 and 87 US$/t of CO2. The road modal choice cut-off range applies to distilleries with a CO2 annual production under 150-200 kt and further than 250-300 km from the hub. For the reference case, 70 out of the 236 distilleries opted for the road modal connection to the hub.