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CO2 capture and utilization technologies (CCU) are recently attracting attention as ways to reduce CO2 emission and generate economic benefits at the same time. Since numerous potential products from CO2 may be considered and multiple processing pathways are possible for each product, there is a growing demand for a tool that can aid in techno-economic and life cycle CO2 analyses of a large number of CCU options, in order to identify promising ones. This work introduces a computer-aided analysis tool called ArKa-TAC3 tailored for this purpose. ArKa-TAC3 can calculate both techno-economic and CO2 reduction metrics of CCU processes in a fast and convenient manner. Sufficient flexibility is assured by adopting a superstructure model framework, which allows the user to conveniently describe a CCU processing network composed of multiple processing steps with a large number of technical options. To demonstrate the tool, a CCU process of acetic acid production is designed and its sustainability is analyzed by using it. By implementing the designed process in four different countries, it is verified that the CCU process can be made sustainable by adopting the process substitution strategies its implementation. Some perspectives on potential applications of the developed tool are given.

Accelerated carbonation curing (ACC) as well as partial replacement of cement with natural minerals are examples of many previous approaches, which aimed to produce cementitious products with better properties and environmental amicabilities. In this regard, the present study investigates CO2 uptake of carbonation-cured cement blended with ground Saudi Arabian volcanic ash (VA). Paste samples with cement replacement of 20%, 30%, 40%, and 50% by mass were prepared and carbonation-cured after initial curing of 24 h. A compressive strength test, X-ray diffractometry (XRD), and thermogravimetry were performed. Although pozzolanic reaction of VA hardly occurred, unlike other pozzolana in blended cement, the results revealed that incorporation of VA as a supplementary cementitious material significantly enhanced the compressive strength and diffusion of CO2 in the matrix. This increased the CO2 uptake capacity of cement, reducing the net CO2 emission upon carbonation curing.

Petroleum refinery is one of the major CO 2 emitters in the global industrial sector. The refinery has a number of various CO 2 emission points including the utility plants and furnaces. Also, it consumes a large amount of industrial water as feedstock for utility. In particular, for those located in the Middle East area which is arid, the supply of the water resource turns out to be a serious problem, so it is highly demanded to utilize the water resource more efficiently. To overcome these challenges, the heat and water recovery (HWR) system applied to the steam plant of the petroleum refinery is proposed. The system allows recovering heat energy of hot flue gas streams to heat the condensate water through heat exchangers. Moreover, the flue gas streams are further cooled below the water dew point to recover water. The goal of this study is to formulate and solve an optimization problem for the heat exchanger network (HEN) synthesis of the system. The potential to CO 2 reduction and cost saving are obtained with the optimal HEN configuration. In addition, sensitivity analysis is conducted by perturbing several economic parameters that affect the optimization results.