To meet climate targets and regulation requirements, there is a need to rapidly decarbonize different sectors such as transportation, agriculture, and industry. The industrial sector is, unsurprisingly, comprised of many different industries such as iron & steel, manufacturing, chemical manufacturing, cement, and ethanol. Some industries, such as the cement industry, have higher costs associated with capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and could be more hesitant to engage with carbon capture and storage opportunities. Other industries, like the ethanol industry, have lower capture costs and relatively pure streams of CO2 that could encourage them to join CO2 Capture and Storage (CCS) projects early on.

Carbon Solutions explored how industries like ethanol could interact with CCS networks, in a high-level case study in the Midwest. Carbon Solutions first identified 92 ethanol facilities in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, and Michigan. Next, buffer ranges of 20, 30, 40, 50 and 65 km were applied with the center of each buffer on an ethanol facility. When buffers overlapped between two or more ethanol facilities they were aggregated into one large buffer. Carbon Solutions then selected those sources that fell within each buffer zone to create different sets of sources. A total of five distinct scenarios that used the different sets of buffer sources were run using Carbon Solutions SimCCSPRO tool.

SimCCSPRO is an economic-engineering mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model that optimally solves when, where, and how much CO2 to capture, transport, and store. SimCCSPRO takes a user-defined annual capture target, user-defined groups of sources and sinks, and a weighted cost surface for pipeline routing as inputs. The model then provides a globally optimized solution, CO2 transport pipeline length in km, unit costs ($/tCO2) for capture, transport and storage, and unit costs across each scenario. SimCCSPRO takes inputs from other Carbon Solutions models such as estimated CO2 storage capacity and storage cost (from SCO2TPRO), estimated CO2 capture costs and capture emissions (from CO2NCORD), and transport routing and costs (through CostMAPPRO). These are all used by SimCCSPRO to determine globally optimal CCS networks and their associated costs given the desired capture target.

First Carbon Solutions explored what other industries exist around chosen ethanol facilities in the Midwest. For buffers of 20 km, 40 km, 60 km, 80 km, and 100 km there are 158, 255, 348, 439, and 532 facilities respectively with capturable CO2 emissions going from 65.67 MtCO2/yr to 298.52 MtCO2/yr. Within 20 km (~12.5 miles) of ethanol facilities, gas and coal power plants and glass manufacturing facilities have the highest counts. Expanding to 60 km (~37 miles) from ethanol facilities, gas and coal power plants and glass manufacturing facilities are joined by pulp and paper processing and food and agricultural facilities as having the highest counts of all facilities. At 100 km, (~62 miles) the five industries with the highest facility count are: gas power plants, coal power plants, iron and steel manufacturing, pulp and paper processing, and glass manufacturing. Refineries also have a sizeable number of facilities within the 100 km buffer.

These facility counts don’t necessarily correspond to the highest capturable emissions. While glass manufacturing has among the highest number of facilities count within each of the buffer ranges, the cumulative capturable emissions from glass manufacturing, as a percent of total capturable emissions across all facilities, is between 0.53% to 0.88%. Alternatively, coal and gas power plants account for almost 62% of all available capturable emissions in a 100km radius of ethanol facilities. For the same buffer range, iron and steel manufacturing and refineries account for approximately 8.7% and 5.7% of capturable emissions respectively.

When looking at the five scenarios that Carbon Solutions ran, a few items stand out. First, as the buffer range increases, the amount of deployed pipeline increases from 3,727 km (~ 2,316 miles) of deployed pipeline using sources within a buffer of 20 km to 15,140 km (~9,408 miles) of pipeline when using sources within a 100 km buffer of ethanol facilities. This correlates with capturing emissions from facilities that are farther away from ethanol facilities and then transporting the captured CO2 to more centralized storage options. Interestingly, most networks deploy in a way that brings captured CO2 emissions from farther away sources and injects them into more centralized storage options located in Illinois and Indiana. Because Illinois and Indiana have favorable subsurface geology with relatively high capacities and low estimated storage costs, this favorable geology helps offset the increase in costs that comes with deploying more pipelines to connect faraway sources. Further, these pipelines can be designed to be larger and thus carry more CO2, taking advantage of economies of scale.

This assumption is supported when looking at the unit costs for each network. Transport costs begin at $16.62/tCO2 when using sources in a 20 km buffer and are $18.27/tCO2 when using sources in a 100 km buffer. Across the same buffer interval, storage costs start from $9.19/tCO2 at 20 km and decrease to $5.48/tCO2 at 100 km, demonstrating how networks utilize larger and longer pipelines to transport CO2 to centralized, high-capacity, lower-cost sinks. Capture cost steadily increases as the buffer range extends farther from ethanol facilities, which is partially explained by looking at facility counts, summarized earlier. As the buffer range increases, the number of facilities for industries that have higher estimated capture costs increases. For example, there are only two cement facilities within 20 km of ethanol facilities while there are seven within 100 km. An increase in the number of facilities from industries that have higher capture costs partially explains why capture costs increase. Ultimately, total costs for CCS networks range from $75.74/tCO2 to $78.42/tCO2 for networks centered on ethanol facilities in the Midwest. This range indicates that CCS networks that center around ethanol facilities could be a viable option for encouraging CCS adoption in the Midwest.

Carbon Solutions explored what CCS networks focused on ethanol facilities in the Midwest would look like. There are numerous facilities from different industries that surround ethanol facilities within buffer ranges of 20 to 100 km. Some of these industries have higher estimated capture costs, which might discourage them from participating in early CCS efforts. Yet these findings suggest that industries like ethanol can support CCS efforts. The total costs of the CCS networks here are encouraging and suggest that CCS in the Midwest can be advantageous for those who choose to participate.

Author: Marcos Miranda, Research Scientist at Carbon Solutions, marcos.miranda@carbonsolutionsllc.com

Featured in Issue 2, 2024 of Carbon Capture Magazine

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