Closing carbon cycles: Evaluating the performance of multi-product CO2 utilisation and storage configurations in a refinery

Compared to a reference system without capture, results show that the largest direct CO2 emission reductions are achieved with CCS without utilisation (−70%) but at the expenses of higher total costs (+7%). Multi-product CCU systems show lower fossil depletion and costs than the reference without capture (−10% and −9%, respectively) because of feedstock replacement by the CO2 utilised. Combination of multi-product CCU with storage turns to be the best alternative for reduced climate change potential (−18% relative to the reference) while still been economically feasible. In addition to lower upstream emissions due to fossil feedstock replacement by utilising CO2, process direct emissions diminish owing to storage. No significant differences were found between the cascade and the parallel configurations. The extra effort to recycle CO2 in the cascade configurations is neither penalised nor rewarded.