by Sam A. Rushing, Advanced Cryogenics, Ltd. | May 2010 (Presented at the gasworld East Europe Conference in Kiev, Ukraine).

Merchant CO2 Opportunities and Emissions Control:
CO2 sources can represent excellent long term money making opportunities
The merchant CO2 market is about 20 million tons of annual consumption, when taking into consideration all forms of this merchant product. This is from the common liquid product used in industry, i.e., soft drink bottling, specialty food freezing, meat and vegetable processing, and the ever present MAP (modified atmosphere packaging) applications for this most versatile product – plus endless industrial applications. The so-called developed markets such as the European Zone, Japan and the U.S. consume the majority of this product, which is refined and liquefied (or compressed into dry ice); however, in developing markets, places with lots of high atmospheric temperatures, and requirements for refrigeration, CO2 is an excellent means of achieving this end.
Today, some markets in Asia, Africa, and Latin America ‘make’ carbon dioxide on site v. using a concentrated by-product from sources such as hydrogen reformers in the refining industry, off gas from chemical plants such as ethylene oxide and titanium dioxide, natural gas processing, fermentation; and sometimes concentrated high pressure underground wells. If the CO2 source is the initial form suggested as the smaller CO2 made for this purpose only, and not a by-product of the chemical industry as described, then fuels such as diesel, coal, coke, oil, etc., are used, and then the CO2 is concentrated; then the CO2 is purified and liquefied to meet often primarily beverage grade standards. These markets can often be expanded dramatically when studying applications for the CO2, and perhaps utilizing larger chemical and energy sources such as reformer and fermentation plants; thus skipping the step which is concentrating the CO2. In this respect, the flue gas from combustion is perhaps 8–12% (v), compared to a concentrated by-product source such as ammonia, fermentation and reformer being up to and beyond 99%. The economics then lend themselves very well to the larger scale, chemical and energy by-product sourced facilities v. often small flue gas sources from fossil fuels…