(371s) Design and Operation of Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCUS) Supply Chain Networks Under Uncertainty

Stationary sources of carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions, such as fossil power plants, gas processing plants, refineries, cement, iron & steel, and other energy-intensive manufacturing industries are responsible for about half of the total emissions in the U.S.^[1] Large stationary emissions of CO₂ can be reduced by capturing CO₂ in bulk at the source locations and then transporting it to sink locations for geological sequestration, storage and/or utilization (e.g., tertiary CO₂-enhanced oil recovery). To design a Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCUS) network, the overall costs associated with carbon capture, pipeline transportation, drilling and injection at sequestration sites and revenue generated though utilization of CO₂ need to be considered. However, uncertainties in the geological storage capacities, the costs of emerging carbon capture technologies and materials, the fluctuating market demands, and the CO₂ selling prices may lead to suboptimal or even infeasible design solutions. Several works have addressed CCUS design and optimization under uncertainty in the past. Indicative research includes the work by He et.al.^[2] to find optimal source-sink matching pairs under temporal constraints. Li et.al^[3] considered uncertainty in raw material and product prices and product demands when performing a combined design of water usage, waste treatment and CCUS networks for sustainable xylitol production. However, practical and large-scale regional CCUS networks are not addressed as they often include hundreds of sources and sequestration sites, and can be very large in size. Due to the many possible scenarios and their realizations of uncertain parameters leads to very large-scale, challenging stochastic optimization problems.

In this work, we study how the uncertainties in geological storage capacities, demands for CO₂ utilization and future CO₂ selling prices affect the design of regional, state-wide and national CCUS supply chains in the U.S. We first consider a two-stage model, where the first stage decisions involve strategic planning in terms of the selection of CO₂ sources and the scale of the CO₂ capture plants, and the second stage decisions include the CO₂ transportation and storage/utilization amounts to selected sinks. The solutions include the decisions related to locations and capacities of the capture plants along with their capture technologies and materials, the location and sizing of the pipelines, the flows of CO₂ to sequestration and utilization sites by minimizing the total network construction and its expected operational costs. We also consider extending this to a multi-stage model to incorporate multi-period design and planning of the CCUS network, where capture plants are constructed at different time periods to achieve an overall net reduction in CO₂ emissions over a planning horizon.

References:

[1] Hasan, M. M. F., Boukouvala, F., First, E. L., Floudas, C. A. Nationwide, Regional and Statewide CO2 Capture, Utilization and Sequestration Supply Chain Network Optimization. Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, 2014, 53(18), 7489–7506.

[2] He, Y. J., Zhang, Y., Ma, Z. F., Sahinidis, N. V., Tan, R. R., & Foo, D. C. (2014). Optimal source–sink matching in carbon capture and storage systems under uncertainty. Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, 53(2), 778-785.

[3] Li, Y., Wei, J., Yuan, Z., Chen, B., & Gani, R. (2022). Sustainable synthesis of integrated process, water treatment, energy supply, and CCUS networks under uncertainty. Computers & Chemical Engineering, 157, 107636.