Carbon Capture and Utilization – A new building block for Circular Economy? [Kohlenstoffabscheidung und -nutzung - ein neuer Baustein für die Kreislaufwirtschaft?]

Frieden, Florian

Abstract

Reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases is a great challenge for today’s industry. Besides using efficiency improvements and CO2 free processes, the utilization of CO2 as a raw material could be an important technology on the way to a greenhouse gas neutral world. Especially in the chemical industry these processes could help to implement a fully circular economy. For now, Carbon Capture and Utilization (CCU) is in its infancy and just a few demonstration plants are already running. After introducing some CCU processes, this article shows the hurdles and potentials of CCU in general. Knowing the hurdles of this new technology is important to accelerate the implementation in an efficient way. The potentials demonstrate how influential CCU could be towards a circular economy for the chemical industry. The basis for this work is the content analysis of expert interviews. The interviews were held with professionals from the chemical industry.