Integrated Technoeconomic Analysis of CO2-EOR from Industrial Sources: Source Comparison, Tax Incentive, and Uncertainty Assessment

Abstract This study develops an integrated technoeconomic analysis (TEA) framework that places industrial CO2 capture, supercritical-phase pipeline transport, CO2-enhanced oil recovery (CO2-EOR) operations, permanent-storage accounting, and the Section 45Q tax credit on a common CO2 mass basis. A discounted cash flow (DCF) approach is used to calculate the net present value (NPV) of a 25-year project life. Unlike approaches that treat delivered CO2 as a single cost input, the model separates source-dependent capture capital and operating costs, transport infrastructure, gross recycling, net storage, field development, and time-dependent revenues. Reservoir performance is represented for project screening using field-validated performance metrics such as oil recovery ratio, response time, gross-to-net CO2 utilization, and water-alternating-gas (WAG) assumptions rather than compositional reservoir simulation. Following deterministic discounted cash flow (DCF) analysis, the model incorporates one-factor-at-a-time sensitivity analysis that quantifies the effects of technical, economic, market, and policy inputs on NPV. The most influential inputs are then propagated through 20,000 Monte Carlo trials using truncated normal distributions to estimate source-specific NPV ranges and probabilities of positive NPV. The framework is applied to eight industrial-source categories connected from Houston to Permian Basin EOR fields through a proposed 500-mile trunk line. The representative case captures 6 million tonnes of CO2 per year and stores 102 million tonnes over 20 operating years at a capacity factor of 85%, supporting approximately 396 injection and 792 production wells. At an oil recovery ratio of 3 barrels per tonne of stored CO2 and a 12% discount rate, natural-gas combined-cycle (NGCC) power plant capture requires $6.56 billion in capital and yields NPV= $0.12 billion and an internal rate of return of 12.3%. Ammonia and natural-gas processing capture cases produce higher NPVs of $2.20 billion and $2.12 billion, respectively. Monte Carlo uncertainty analysis shows that ammonia and natural-gas-processing capture are the most robust anthropogenic cases, each achieving a 94% probability of positive NPV, defined as P(NPV > 0). In contrast, the P(NPV > 0) decreases to 52% for NGCC power-plant capture and 39% for refinery fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) capture, indicating substantially greater downside risk for dilute flue-gas sources. The results identify low-cost, high-purity industrial sources as the most reliable anthropogenic anchor supplies for a staged Gulf Coast-to-Permian deployment.