Integrated Carbon Capture and Utilization Evaluation for U.S. Microbreweries

The brewing process for beer production both utilizes and emits carbon dioxide (CO2). Instead of capturing and cleaning CO2 produced in the process, most microbreweries emit it into the atmosphere. Microbreweries have the potential to save money and reduce their carbon footprint by capturing, cleaning, and reusing CO2 from the fermentation process instead of purchasing it from an outside supplier. CO2 capture and cleaning systems are now commercially available but are costly. Given the financial drawback that microbreweries face, a decision support tool (DST) is developed with a dashboard that aims to provide a feasibility assessment for implementing a specific carbon capture and utilization system (CCUS). The dashboard has an ease of use and accessibility and provides relevant information for a wide range of variables: direct and indirect costs and benefits to perform assessments including life cycle cost-benefit analysis for the CCUS, sensitivity analysis, and more. The DST uses testing and validation through expert elicitation and simulation. Its design relies on system simulation software Vensim for the development of a back-end equation derivation. The front-end is hosted on a user-friendly dashboard. Further testing and validation can be conducted to further improve the frontend design and usability of the system.