The Role of Carbon Dioxide Recovery and Reuse in Industry

Carbon dioxide gets produced as a byproduct across a wide range of industrial processes, from fermentation and combustion to cement production and steel manufacturing. For most of industrial history, that CO2 simply went into the atmosphere. Recovering it instead, purifying it, and routing it back into productive use is increasingly how forward-thinking operations are approaching both their cost structure and their emissions footprint.

The IEA estimates roughly 230 million tonnes of CO2 are currently used each year across industrial applications. The bulk of that goes to urea fertilizer manufacturing and enhanced oil recovery, but a growing share is finding its way into food production, refrigeration, chemical synthesis, and construction materials.

Where Recovered CO2 Goes

Food and beverage is the most visible consumer of recovered CO2. Carbonation in soft drinks and beer, modified atmosphere packaging that extends shelf life, and stunning in meat processing all depend on a reliable supply of food-grade carbon dioxide. Most of that supply comes from recovered CO2 captured as a byproduct of fermentation, ammonia production, and hydrogen manufacturing rather than from dedicated production.

Refrigeration and freezing operations use liquid CO2 as a cryogenic medium for rapid chilling and freezing. Its heat absorption characteristics make it effective for blast chilling, spiral freezers, and cryogenic tunnel freezers across food processing environments where nitrogen would also work but CO2 offers different cost and temperature profile tradeoffs.

In chemical manufacturing, CO2 is a feedstock for producing urea, methanol, polycarbonates, and polyols. The urea pathway alone consumes around 130 million tonnes of CO2 annually, making fertilizer production the single largest industrial sink for recovered carbon dioxide.

Greenhouses and controlled agriculture operations use CO2 enrichment to accelerate plant growth. Elevated CO2 concentrations, typically two to three times ambient atmospheric levels, can increase crop yields meaningfully in enclosed growing environments, and recovered CO2 from nearby industrial sources supplies that demand at lower cost than purpose-manufactured product.

The Recovery Process

Capturing CO2 from industrial flue gases typically involves amine scrubbing, where the emissions stream passes through a liquid solvent that selectively absorbs CO2. The CO2-rich solvent is then heated in a stripping unit, releasing a concentrated CO2 stream that gets compressed, purified, and liquefied for distribution or direct use.

The economics of recovery depend heavily on the concentration of CO2 in the source stream. Ethanol fermentation produces a near-pure CO2 exhaust stream that requires minimal processing to reach food or industrial grade. Cement kilns and power plant flue gases contain far more dilute concentrations and require more intensive separation, which drives up capture costs considerably.

Supply Chain Implications

Industrial CO2 supply is more geographically constrained and demand-sensitive than most buyers realize until a shortage hits. The CO2 market tightened significantly in 2022 when high natural gas prices in Europe caused several ammonia plants to curtail production, taking large volumes of byproduct CO2 off the market simultaneously. Food and beverage producers who had treated CO2 as a commodity input with unlimited availability found themselves scrambling for supply.

That episode illustrated how CO2 recovery and reuse, while often framed as an environmental story, carries real strategic importance for industrial operations that depend on it as a process input. Facilities that source CO2 from recovered streams close to their production sites carry less supply chain exposure than those relying on CO2 transported long distances from a single source.

Forge Forward with nexAir

nexAir supplies CO2 across food and beverage, manufacturing, and industrial applications, backed by the KnowHow™ to match supply method and grade to what each process actually requires. Talk to your local nexAir team about your CO2 needs and Forge Forward with a supply program built for reliability.