Development of emission reduction management scenario, techno-economic and environmental assessment at Iranian petrochemical companies

In this paper, the solutions other than energy efficiency that focus on reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the petrochemical industry have been examined. The total GHG emissions produced in studied petrochemical is around 58 MMton/year. These considered solutions include the use of renewable energy in the petrochemical industry, the production of blue hydrogen in this industry, production of urea based on carbon capture and utilization technology and green methanol, as well. Then, by introducing the selected solutions based on individual and joint investment, the technical–economic evaluation of these solutions for implementation in newly built petrochemicals has been evaluated. The results showed that, in all scenarios, with the same year and percentage of applying the scenario, the collective mode is more profitable than the individual mode. Furthermore, after calculating the amount of investments and net present value (NPV)s in the emission reduction scenarios, it was determined that with the constant amount of emission reduction based on the scenario of urea production and the lower rate of emissions reduction based on renewable power plants, more profitability will be obtained, but on the other hand, the amount of initial investment will also increase. Based on the results obtained, it is shown that the ratio of NPV to initial investment in each percentage of emission reduction is higher in the case of R_R = 0 compared to R_G = 0. The voluntary commitment at R_G = 0 incurs the lowest capital cost of 52.42 MM$, while the most ambitious commitment of 25% at R_R = 0 requires a capital cost of 11,055 MM$.