Climate-friendly hydrocarbons from biogenic carbon dioxide and renewable electricity

Power-to-gas (P2G), or more widely, power-to-product (P2X) technologies producing synthetic gaseous fuels or other products have the potential to address the issue on intermittency of renewables and simultaneously contribute to the reduction of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. The key objective of this paper is to identify feasible utilisation pathways for biogenic CO2 linked to biomass driven industry sectors. These include e.g. pulp & paper, combined heat & power (CHP), biogas and bioethanol production for which technologies for P2X integration to e.g. synthetic natural gas (SNG), industrial chemicals and Fischer-Tropsch (FT) products have been analysed. The work has included techno-economic feasibility analyses of specific system operations from operator’s / investor’s point of view in several market scenarios. As main results operational costs and incomes as well as profitability indicators are presented for each CCU-pathway along with sensitivity analyses.To boost market entry, demonstration campaigns and implementation analyses at industrial sites of some of the paths examined in the paper’s techno-economic studies have been conducted by VTT. For example, P2X demonstration at energy company St1’s bio-refinery to produce FT-products was piloted during autumn 2018. VTT also prepared a study for the City of Nokia on various opportunities for using bio-based carbon dioxide in the ECO3 business park which specializes in the bio-and circular economy. Key findings from these campaigns and analyses are also presented in the paper.