The Influence of Variable CO2 Emission Tax Rate on Flexible Chemical Process Synthesis

The emission of greenhouse gasses is a major environmental problem, and efforts are being made worldwide in various ways to encourage producers to reduce their emissions. There is a need to incorporate environmental measures into process design and synthesis, as pollution prevention is a higher priority than waste management, and in this way, more sustainable solutions can also be achieved. One possibility is to introduce a CO2 tax, the value of which is very uncertain in the future. This paper demonstrates how the CO2 tax affects the optimal results of synthesizing chemical processes using mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP). It was found that the tax increase promotes the use of better-quality raw materials and more efficient process units. Energy consumption and emissions are reduced and economic performance deteriorates. A multi-period, two-stage stochastic approach with recourse is suitable to incorporate the uncertainty of the CO2 tax in the MINLP process synthesis and gives better results than a simpler deterministic approach. In the case of the heat exchanger network synthesis, the costs obtained with the stochastic approach were 5% lower, and the emissions 7% lower than with a deterministic approach.

Automated summary

This paper examines the impact of CO2 tax on chemical process synthesis, revealing that an increase in tax promotes the use of higher-quality raw materials and more efficient process units while reducing energy consumption and emissions, but economic performance deteriorates.