Utilisation of Carbon Dioxide and Gasified Biomass for the Generation of Value Added Products

Renewable fuels generation and the elimination of fossil-fuel reliance are an important part of sustainable growth. As petrochemicals are a key economic cornerstone of contemporary society, an impetus exists to find potential supply routes so as to maintain scarce resources. In addition, waste utilisation to manufacture value-added products is essential to mitigate emissions of greenhouse gases. Biomass, which is a neutral CO₂ fuel, acts as a possible basis for the generation of energy and fuels. In addition, biomass gasification creates a syngas rich in hydrogen that can be used in the petrochemical industry for the production of value-added materials such as ammonia and methanol. Based on the existing developed biomass-treating infrastructure, incorporating large-scale biomass value-added products into the existing petrochemical generating network can give significant benefits. In addition, there is high possibility to utilise other undesired by-products such as CO₂ which exists within the same infrastructure network. In this research, Aspen Plus model is built based on the oxygen/steam gasification configuration for the production of H₂-rich syngas by different feedstock available in the State of Qatar. The resulting syngas is used with an external combined CO₂ source in the processing of methanol and urea. The results showed that the addition of the external CO₂ source to the biomass gasification system could save around 3% of the emitted stream and increase the production of methanol and urea by around 4% and 10%, respectively. Moreover, the economics of the integrated system are optimised to maximise the utilisation of CO₂ and minimise the capital and operating costs along with net environmental emissions.