Quality-Matched Life Cycle Assessment of CCU Supply Chains for SMR Tail Gas CO2 in Industrial Parks

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:Highlights the importance of quality-matching in CCU LCA and provides a dynamic framework that can be adapted to other feedstocks and regions.

🏢実務担当者:Industrial park managers can use the findings to design dual-grade CO2 pipelines and prioritize low-purity utilization pathways, reducing energy costs and emissions.

🏛政策担当者:Provides evidence for policies that incentivize low-purity CCU applications like concrete curing and mineralization over methanol synthesis, and for designing CO2 infrastructure.

Carbon capture and utilization (CCU) is imperative for industrial decarbonization. However, current life cycle assessment (LCA) methodologies often apply a static, one-size-fits-all approach, assuming a 99% CO2 purity standard for all utilization pathways. This ignores the thermodynamic limits of capture technologies and the tolerance of certain endpoints for coarse gas, leading to severe over-purification energy penalties. To bridge this gap, we developed a quality-matched dynamic LCA framework targeting steam methane reforming (SMR) tail gas in industrial parks. A superstructure matrix was constructed, coupling 16 capture configurations (spanning chemical absorption to cryogenic separation across 85–99% purities) with five utilization pathways, under a dynamic grid decarbonization model (2024–2060). The baseline scenario shows that methanol is the most carbon-intensive pathway at 16.88 kg CO2-eq per kg CO2 utilized, whereas mineralization and concrete curing remain near break-even at 0.221 and 0.010 kg CO2-eq, respectively. When low-purity demand is matched with PSA capture at 85–90% purity, the net GWP of mineralization and concrete curing decreases to 0.134 and 0.005 kg CO2-eq, corresponding to capture-stage penalty reductions exceeding 60% relative to unnecessary 99% purification. Under the dynamic electricity scenario, concrete curing reaches the net-zero tipping point around 2031, and the coupled mineralization substitution strategy ultimately achieves −0.046 kg CO2-eq per kg CO2 utilized. These findings provide a compelling scientific basis for policymakers to design dual-grade CO2 pipeline networks and prioritize low-purity, high-circularity building materials over carbon-intensive chemical synthesis in near-term industrial transitions.

• semanticscholar https://doi.org/10.3390/su18105063first seen 2026-05-23 05:43:29 · last seen 2026-05-27 04:58:13