Challenges of techno-economic analysis of reverse water gas shift reaction

Purpose – Global climate change demands multifaceted solutions, especially in the realm of emerging green technologies. Carbon capture and utilization (CCU) technologies are crucial for reducing emissions in sectors where other alternatives are not economically favorable. In recent years, researchers focused on the catalytic reforming of CO2 with H2 to produce chemicals and energy source. One of these researched methods is reverse water gas shift reaction, which can be a cost-competitive solution for syngas according to previous studies. Design/methodology/approach – Our goal is to have a deeper understanding of reverse water gas shift as an alternative way of carbon utilization from an economic perspective. In our research, we utilized literature sources and Excel to develop our own model. Findings – In our study, analysis of literature and the model developed using excel reveal that the RWGS process as a chemical CO2 conversion route could serve as a sustainable alternative for syngas production, contingent upon the simultaneous presence of multiple factors. However, considering the current TRL of this technology and the anticipated high, yet scalable, maintenance costs, achieving profitability necessitates a significantly large plant scale. Alternatively, profitable operation could be attained through regulatory changes, such as an increase in CO2 ETS credits. Since the number of available literatures is highly limited, and the technology has a lower level of TRL, there is a lot of uncertainty in our techno-economic analysis. However, it is clear that this technology to be profitable, many factors must come together at the same time. Originality – This is the first empirical work that integrates economic decision-making theory with training transfer mechanisms, incorporating factors that organizations can control to optimize human capital investments. Additionally, establishing supervisor and peer support as contextual variables extends the widely recognized model by Baldwin and Ford.