Environmental Impact Evaluation of CO 2 Absorption and Desorption Enhancement by Membrane Gas Absorption: A Life Cycle Assessment Study

Membrane gas absorption technology has been considered a promising approach to mitigate CO 2 emissions from power plants. The aim of this study is to evaluate the environmental impacts of CO 2 absorption and desorption processes by hollow fiber membrane contactors using a life cycle assessment methodology. On the basis of the ReCipe 2016 Midpoint and the ReCipe 2016 Endpoint methods, the research results show that membrane gas absorption systems exhibit the lowest environmental impacts across the majority of assessed categories in comparison with chemical absorption and membrane gas separation systems. The CO 2 capture process via membrane gas absorption has the most significant impact on the METP category, with heat consumption as the primary contributing factor accounting for 55%, followed by electricity consumption accounting for 43.1%. According to the sensitivity analysis, heating by natural gas shows better performance than other heat supply sources in improving overall environmental impacts. In addition, the increasing utilization of renewable energy in electricity supply reduces the global warming potential, fossil resource consumption and ozone formation.