Carbon dioxide (CO2) capture and utilization technologies: New developments toward net-zero emissions and climate-change mitigation

The accelerating rise in anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions poses a critical threat to global climate stability, necessitating scalable and technologically robust mitigation strategies. Carbon capture and utilization (CCU) have emerged as a key approach for reducing emissions while simultaneously transforming CO₂ into fuels, chemicals, and value-added products. This review provides a comprehensive and integrated assessment of recent advances in CO₂ capture technologies, advanced capture materials, and utilization pathways, with emphasis on their combined role in influencing conversion efficiency, material performance, and system-level techno-economic outcomes to support net-zero and circular-carbon objectives. Contemporary capture approaches, including pre-combustion, post-combustion, oxy-fuel combustion, and direct air capture, are critically examined alongside emerging materials such as functionalized carbons, graphene-based composites, zeolites, metal–organic frameworks, and hybrid sorbent–catalyst systems. The review further evaluates state-of-the-art CO₂ utilization routes, including dry reforming of methane, bi- and oxy-reforming, CO₂-assisted dehydrogenation, and catalytic hydrogenation to fuels and chemicals, highlighting how material and capture performance directly affect conversion efficiency and process integration. In addition, this review incorporates a dedicated techno-economic assessment (TEA) of CCU technologies, critically evaluating capital and operating costs, energy requirements, process efficiency, scalability, and market competitiveness across major capture and utilization pathways. Key scientific, technological, and economic barriers hindering large-scale CCU deployment are identified, including capture–conversion coupling, energy intensity, catalyst durability, and the interdependence of material selection and process performance. Finally, future research directions are outlined to accelerate the transition of CCU from laboratory-scale innovations to commercially viable, integrated carbon management solutions. By synthesizing advances in CO₂ capture, utilization, and techno-economic performance within a unified framework, this work provides strategic insights for advancing CCU as a practical pathway for emissions reduction and sustainable chemical production.