Abstract
The present paper is a review of the most viable, sustainable, and carbon-neutral industrial routes available for producing urea based de-NOx reduction agents (e.g., AdBlue 32%), with a negligeable contribution to the GHG emissions, in comparison with the conventional current applications.Starting from the analysis of the trend in the demand of urea-based de-NOx agents and the forecast growth of such market, the study provides a quantitative assessment of the contribution to the GHG emissions due to the common production routes of these chemicals, showing an alternative industrial process which balances and neutralizes this adverse environmental effect.Indeed, some carbon-intensive industrial processes such as cement or steel productions have, as of now, no feasible way to avoid or significantly limit CO2 emissions from their flue gas waste streams. The integration schemes with such existing large CO2 point emitters are investigated with the objective to produce a carbon-neutral urea-based de-NOx agent with minimum additional contributions to the GHG emissions.
