“Towards an industrialisation of_CO2 emission recycling” – White Paper

Much of the world is looking towards an ambitious goal: achieving carbon neutrality by 2050.

To meet this challenge, one strategy is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions related to human activities. Either by improving technologies or by reducing production, in a broad sense.

Another strategy, the one that interests us today, aims to capture_CO2 directly from the atmosphere, to store it, before transforming it. The goal is to produce from_CO2 a material that will sequester carbon in the long term, so that it does not return to the atmosphere too quickly.

It is therefore nothing less than creating a circular economy around_CO2. The capture of CO2 linked to industrial activities is one of the challenges. In fact, today’s companies have an obligation to limit their environmental impact. Many technologies are currently being developed to capture emissions directly after they leave the factory. They could allow companies with many factories to recover much of their emissions and recycle them. This presupposes, therefore, the implementation of an entire chain of collection and treatment of emissions, not to mention their potential recovery.

One of the issues related to recovery is the acceptability by the general public of products made with_CO2. Indeed, the recovery of_CO2 implies the appearance of consumer goods directly derived from its collection. Surveys conducted show that even if the general public may be held back at first glance by this ingredient, which is original to say the least, consumer acceptability would be there quickly. With the marketing argument of the ethical aspect linked to the purchase of these products resulting from the recycling of greenhouse gases.

However, the main concern of manufacturers today is the essential transition to industrial scale of CO2 capture, storage and recovery technologies. Without this, it is impossible to imagine a generalization of these practices, which will be restricted to larger companies. This is a key issue, in the face of carbon neutrality. The International Energy Agency has also set out an ambitious roadmap on this issue, which should see the world improve its ability to capture CO2 by a factor of 100 over the next 15 years.

The IPCC also mentions_CO2 capture as an effective solution to reduce the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

CO2 recovery is not _essential. Sequestration methods, which consist of reinjecting compressed CO2 into the subsoil, taking advantage of appropriate geological structures, can allow_CO2 to be kept at _{depth for a long period of time.}

While_CO2 capture, storage and retrieval technologies should enable manufacturers to achieve their environmental impact reduction targets, they can in no way replace the energy sobriety measures that have been emerging for several months. On the other hand, they will complement them advantageously.

Source: News ES Euro