Overview
The Australian heavy industry sector contributes more than $20b to the national economy each year and provides employment to tens of thousands of Australians particularly in regional areas. However, the emergence of emissions reduction schemes in Europe, Asia, and North America combined with the growing demand for low-carbon iron, aluminium, cement, zinc, and other products is putting the sector under increasing pressure to reduce its emissions to remain globally competitive. While some of the sector’s emissions can be reduced through greater utilisation of renewable energy, 75% of the sector’s emissions cannot be avoided by simply using renewable electricity.
Project Details
This project sought to explore the opportunity for CO2 capture and re-use, and utilisation or possibly storage from a regional perspective. The recycling of industrial CO2 and waste heat offers opportunities for deep decarbonisation of hard to mitigate industry sectors such as cement, alumina, and steel manufacturing. The most appropriate and economically sensible utilisation options will vary depending on external factors such as CO2 volume and purity and the region which could give rise to the co-location of resources, uses and users.
Research Areas
Technologies to lower carbon emissions through synergistic production of industrial chemicals and fuels
Outcomes
This project used a consistent and methodical approach to collate region-specific information, and to inform which optimum CO2 conversion or utilisation pathways considering locality, scale, feasibility and economics. Input was sought from industry, experts and literature, and consideration given to existing and planned projects elsewhere. This project developed a roadmap for carbon capture and storage from 19 plants from the cement, lime, steel, alumina, and ammonia industries, and assessed a variety of CO2 utilisation options using multi-criteria analysis. Products were compared using a gate-to-gate life cycle analysis were beverage, methanol, plastics, urea, (sustainable) aviation fuel and mineral carbonation, which were also compared against geological storage.
Next Steps
Recommendations have been made regarding the various possible CO2 utilisation options in the lime, cement, steel, alumina and ammonia sectors. Further exploration is recommended for the most prospective pathways such as mineral carbonation, sustainable aviation fuel, methanol and urea, including a full cradle to grave life cycle analysis. For geological storage, further evaluation of transport economics is recommended.