Carbon dioxide: Matter of Pollution or Profit?

Abstract

Carbon dioxide has taken a center stage in the environmental arena in recent years. One of the most alarming global environmental problems of today is greenhouse effect. This problem is mainly caused by the increased atmospheric CO2 concentration due to the burning of fossil fuels for power generation. A response strategy, to reduce the problem of a further increasing greenhouse effect, is to decrease anthropogenic CO2 emissions, from flue and fuel gases produced in combustion and gasification processes in power plants, by efficiency improvement or CO2 removal. The removal of CO2 from these gases is not a major technological problem any more, because many technologies have been developed for this purpose. The real problem in the near future is thus not in which way CO2 can be removed, but: “What to do with the enormous quantity of CO2? This article is intended to examine possible strategies. While CO2 is certainly not a panacea, it possesses a number of characteristics that suggest the use of CO2 could provide both environmental and economic benefit.