Economic feasibility study for CO2 ocean sequestration

Abstract

The CO2 storage in geologic and oceanic reservoirs is considered to be one of the carbon management strategies for responding to global climate change. Ocean carbon sequestration is purposeful storage acceleration into the ocean of large amounts of carbon that would accumulate in the atmosphere and naturally enter the ocean over a longer timespan. Some technologies for CO2 ocean sequestrations have been developed as a nation project. However, CO2 ocean sequestrations are attractive because they have the advantage of vast capacity sequestration far away from industrial areas, and offer easier monitoring whereas less economic advantage has been indicated as one of the key barriers compared with CO2 geosphere sequestration, which is produced as a byproduct. In this paper, a conceptual design for CO2 ocean sequestration is introduced, and the preliminary examination is described. As a result, the CO2 price, US$ 24/t shows far away from the economics. The causes come from the expensive CO2 recovery cost and the low CO2 price. The expensive CO2 recovery cost is because too much electricity and water are consumed. In order to look for an economic balance point for CO2 ocean sequestration, NPV=0, it is increases the CO2 price. Finally 60.4$ per ton is found to be the balance price.