Search

The mitigation of carbon dioxide is one of the scientific and technological challenges of the 2000s. Among the technologies that are under assessment, the recovery of carbon dioxide from power plants or industrial flue gases plays a strategic role. Recovered carbon dioxide can be either disposed in natural fields or used. The availability of large amounts of carbon dioxide may open new routes to its utilisation in biological, chemical and innovative technological processes. In this paper, the potential of carbon dioxide utilisation in the short-, medium-term is reviewed.

The concept of reducing emissions of CO2 to the atmosphere by producing chemicals has been suggested by many people as a potential greenhouse gas mitigation option. The goal of such schemes is either: (i) fixation of CO2 in a chemical compound for a significant time, or, (ii) reduction of emissions by replacing an existing process with an alternative releasing less CO2. This paper describes a simple assessment procedure which can be used as a preliminary screen to test the validity of schemes for chemicals utilisation of CO2. The procedure is presented as a template (or worksheet); two summaries of its use are presented. The template gives research workers a decision methodology which leads to the proposed scheme either being rejected or accepted as being of sufficient potential to merit more detailed investigation. © 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.