image: Carbon–Hydrogen–Oxygen Symbiosis Networks provide a link through units, which facilitate the exchange of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen-based materials for each to meet demands within the facility while also cutting waste.
Credit: Rachel Barton/Texas A&M Engineering
Enabling collaboration to monetize emissions is becoming increasingly attainable as researchers explore enhancing integration within the industrial sector through work focused on Carbon–Hydrogen–Oxygen Symbiosis Networks (CHOSYN).
The primary emphasis of CHOSYN is to integrate industrial plants that utilize hydrocarbon processing, recently studied by Dr. Mahmoud M. El-Halwagi and graduate student Meshal Aldawsari in Texas A&M University’s College of Engineering.
Their work, Resilience Assessment and Sustainability Enhancement of Gas and CO2 Utilization via Carbon–Hydrogen–Oxygen Symbiosis Networks, dives deeper into converting emissions to value-added products through this network and was recently featured as the editors’ choice in a special issue of the journal, Sustainability.
“This work is consistent with ongoing research activities in my group that regard various environmental problems as opportunities for converting waste materials to valuable products by using advanced chemical engineering and systems integration approaches,” El-Halwagi said. “The CHOSYN concept was co-introduced by my former student, Dr. Mohamed Noureldin, about a decade ago”.
This industrial network provides a link through units, which facilitate the exchange of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen-based materials for each to meet demands within the facility while also cutting waste.
Within the synergistic use of mass and energy resources, the network framework aims to maximize carbon utilization while minimizing emissions, cost and the number of processing steps within the industrial sector.
Noureldin believes the insights from CHOSYN can not only highlight opportunities but build networks that utilize resources to best match the supply and demand.
“Society’s most pressing challenges are linked through these basic atomic relationships. Where oxygen on CO2 is an undesired part of the emissions problem, oxygen on H2O is part of the solution to the world’s need for fresh water,” Noureldin said.
According to El-Halwagi, the CHOSYN framework will also lead to economic growth and job creation.
“It creates value-added products from waste streams discharged by hydrocarbon processing facilities,” El-Halwagi said. “While each industrial facility may look at its waste as a burden, an intelligent integration of these waste materials can provide the feedstock to create valuable products.”
The team observed challenges and opportunities within the industrial sector and looked for the most efficient way for facilities to trade off materials. What they found is that the more these plants depend on each other, the more vulnerable the system could be if one part fails.
“We need a resilient supply chain. When one part of the supply chain is affected, the impact can ripple and influence many other facets of life,” Aldawsari said. “When a company designs a plant, it typically focuses on selecting a configuration that is profitable, environmentally responsible and safe, but resilience has to be part of that conversation, as well.”
With that knowledge, the team introduced a flow dependency measure that quantifies how disruptions spread through the network and helped identify the most critical nodes. The results showed that even with the vulnerabilities and worst-case disruption scenarios, the CHOSYN designs can significantly boost carbon reuse and reduce the need for new raw materials.
“Since the symbiosis concept motivates several industrial facilities to collaborate, there is always concern about the reliability and resilience of these frameworks,” El-Halwagi said. “It is necessary to safeguard against disruption, and if disruptions occur, they need to be resolved as quickly as possible.”
Journal
Sustainability