Synthesis of Sunlight, Seawater and CO₂ based Industrial Parks

In response to climate change concerns, there has been an increasing global commitment to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Circular economy pillars have been proposed as a means to conserve resources, limit emissions and maintain sustainable revenue streams. Most CO₂ emissions stem from stationary sources, which are largely due to industrial processes (IPCC, 2005). In an attempt to reduce these emissions, there has been an increased focus on carbon capture utilization and storage solutions, e.g. integrating carbon dioxide in industrial parks to create value-added products. Ahmed et al. (2020) introduced a method that can represent any resource, material or energy, within a cluster to identify integration potential. In this work, we utilize the mixed integer linear program to synthesize waste reuse clusters at zero carbon footprint. The work mainly assesses the potential benefits of utilizing waste resources such as CO₂ emissions, free resources such as seawater (H₂O and its minerals), air (N₂, and O₂) and sunlight as an energy source to produce various value-added products to create carbon neutral industrial parks. This attempt demonstrates circular economy values on an industrial park level by conserving fresh resources, maximizing reuse of materials and creating valuable products. The system studied was able to generate profits while adhering to emission and material constraints.