CO2 Applications and Sourcing Alternatives

On one hand, carbon dioxide (CO2) is often mentioned in the press as the most abundant greenhouse gas, now in excess of 400 ppm (parts-per-million), according to most measurements, and a serious threat to global warming and a major contributor to climate change.

On the other hand, there have been rather severe shortages in various world merchant markets, primarily due to a lack of by-product carbon dioxide from (sometimes) anhydrous ammonia production, which is a common raw feedstock for many CO2 liquefaction/purification plants. The reasons for such outages are annual turnarounds of the source plants, reduced source plant operating schedules (due to shorter farming seasons), and natural gas feedstock problems for the ammonia plants, as one troubled source type…