Abstract
Nowadays, it is crucial to change daily habits to live in a more sustainable world. From an industrial point of view, the capture of CO2 is becoming more and more important in the chemical industry to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and its reuse can be an alternative to fossil resources. Another major challenge for future engineers is the significant increase in the use of renewable energy sources. In this perspective, a process allowing the synthesis of three different olefins from CO2 captured in industrial flue gases and using only wind energy is established. This process is separated into three major sections: water electrolysis, carbon dioxide reduction to produce methanol and methanol-to-olefins synthesis. The targeted production capacity is of 450 000 tonnes per year of olefins, which are considered to be ethylene, propylene and butylene. This process, which involves a complete flowsheet modelling is implemented with the Aspen Plus software. A heat integration is performed to improve the system energy recovery and shows that 75% of the energy requirements can be recovered from the process. Then, an economic analysis is conducted to evaluate the viability of the modelled process and leads to the conclusion that the process is viable if built in 2050. Indeed, a positive net present value of about 4 345.47 Me is obtained after 20 years. A sensitivity analysis evaluating the influence of the price of CO2 on the price of ethylene is also conducted. Finally, a life cycle analysis allows to analyse the process from an environmental point of view and shows that the process can be an interesting alternative in comparison to the production of bio-olefins.