Enhancing the separation of produced gas and CO2 capture for enhanced oil recovery in China, multi-objective simulated optimization and quantitative assessment for sustainable development

The Belt and Road Initiative proposed by China is a common aspiration of all countries along their routes to achieve sustainable development of the environment, economy, society, and people's livelihood. Recently, prominently raised CO2 concentration in the Belt and Road region is perceived to give rise to these serious greenhouse effects on severe and sustained global warming. It could lead to related climate instability, adverse natural disasters, glacier melting, and extreme weather patterns. CO2-enhanced oil recovery (CO2-EOR) is one of the essential CCU technologies. Due to lacking sustainable quantitative evaluation of CCU technology widely used in promising industries, it is imperative to conduct process simulation and optimization evaluation of CCU technology. Considering the lack of sustainable quantitative evaluation of CO2-EOR, we proposed a multi -objective optimization and sustainable quantitative assessment to provide insights and enhance the separation of produced gas and CO2 capture for CO2-EOR. Their industrial applications before and after optimization were systematically simulated, discussed, and compared. With unremitting efforts, the optimized CO2 capture process can stably separate oil field-produced gas into pure CO2 and oilfield light hydrocarbons, with a mass content of CO2 over 99.7 wt%. The optimized process demonstrated outstanding technical, economic, social, livelihood, and environmental properties. This study will undoubtedly benefit researchers in related fields of CCU process simulation, promote significant breakthroughs in basic research, superstructure, and commercial applications, and provide a perspective for the Belt and Road Initiative to establish better and optimize CCU devices and realize regional and global cooperation, future scientific and industrial progress.

Automated summary

The Belt and Road Initiative proposed by China aims to achieve sustainable development for countries along its routes. However, the increasing CO2 concentration in the region is causing serious greenhouse effects and global warming. This study focuses on optimizing the CO2-enhanced oil recovery (CO2-EOR) process and provides a multi-objective optimization and sustainable quantitative assessment. The optimized process shows excellent technical, economic, social, livelihood, and environmental properties. This research has significant implications for CCU process simulation and can contribute to the development and optimization of CCU devices under the Belt and Road Initiative.