Life cycle assessment of a carbon capture utilization and storage supply chain in the United Kingdom

The UK is the second country with higher carbon dioxide emissions in Europe (419.820 Mton of emissions in 2014) [1]. To solve this environmental problem, a carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS) supply chain is suggested by Leonzio et al. [2]: carbon dioxide is stored in the Bunter Sandstone and used to produce calcium carbonate. However, carbon supply chains require a lot of energy for their operation, producing additional environmental impact: a life cycle assessment (LCA) analysis is suggested with the aim to verify the net environmental bene􀏐its of the carbon frameworks. For this reason, in this research, the LCA methodology is applied to the suggested CCUS supply chain for the UK. The analysis is carried out according to the following phases: goal and scope, life cycle inventory analysis, life cycle impact assessment, interpretation phase [3]. As the study aims to verify that the optimized CCUS supply chain can reduce carbon dioxide emissions according to the target set for 2030, a yearly calculation is considered in the LCA analysis. System expansion is used to de􀏐ine the functional unit as the following: 7.36·1010 MJ of electrical energy+5.4 Mton of calcium carbonate+0.4 Mton of stored carbon dioxide [4]. System boundaries are de􀏐ined in 􀏐igure 1. Inventory analysis for the second phase is provided in Leonzio et al. [3]. The CML 2001 methodology is used for the impact assessment phase [5]: the global warming potential (GWP) for the supply chain is of 9.37 MtonCO2eq, while for the overall UK carbon dioxide emissions is of 52.37 Mton/year, lower than the target (54.6 Mton/year). Power plant and the thermal energy production from biomass in the calcium carbonate process are signi􀏐icant issues. However, increasing the utilization/storage ratio of carbon dioxide, a higher environmental impact in terms of GWP and other categories of impact is obtained