Carbon dioxide capture from emissions sources will increase by several orders of magnitude between now and 2050, as the world decarbonises fossil fuel usage. Much of that captured carbon dioxide (CO2) will be sent underground for permanent storage in geological formations, and much of it will be utilised for emerging CO2 applications.
There have been shortages of CO2 in the past decade as supply and demand have fallen out of balance for several months. Thinking forward to the supply and demand balance, even if we were to drink carbonated beverages twice as often as we do and switch all food freezing from liquid nitrogen and mechanical chillers to CO2-based processes, there would still be a significant excess of CO2 captured in comparison to the global demand that exists from the current portfolio of CO2 applications.
Are there any potential new large-scale applications that might soak up some of the captured CO2 which will inevitably become so abundant in the future? To make a significant dent in the amount of CO2 that will become available, these applications will need to be extremely high-demand utilisation cases. At present, about 80% of the CO2 captured globally is used for enhanced oil recovery (EOR). That dwarfs the amount of captured CO2 that is routed to the food and beverage industry. It also makes the total amount of CO2 that is used for pH control in water treatment, welding, greenhouse growing, solvent extraction of medical cannabis or specialty gases SFC laboratory applications look tiny. Is there an emerging EOR-scale application for CO2 out there?
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