Gas flaring: technicalities, challenges, and the economic potentials.

Gas flaring has been identified as a major contributor to global warming and climate change. It is used either as a safety measure or as a means of disposal for technical or economic reasons. Over 250 toxins have been directly/indirectly associated with gas flaring and its associated emissions. Most of these toxins have been known to have significant inimical impacts on humans' health, plant biodiversity, and the environment. With the recent rise in global energy insecurity, several EU countries have either returned to coal power generation or extended the lifetime of their coal-fired plants thereby increasing anthropogenic carbon emissions. This increase in carbon emission has necessitated the re-evaluate of gas flare practices vis-à-vis the environmental challenges and the financial potentials. This paper presents a holistic review of gas flaring, its types, composition, systems design, estimation methods, social and environmental challenges, the abatement measures, and the re-utilization strategies. It identified the potential to save a minimum of US$10.4 billion globally if more stringent gas flare abatement measures were pursued. Furthermore, the paper highlights the recent trends in flare gas re-utilization technologies such as the production of bioproducts which has been reported to hold a potential for an annual production of about 148 million bbl of biocrude and 67 million metrics of algae protein from 140 bcm of globally flared gas. Finally, it explored the possible way forward and stringent measures that can be pursued to disincentivize gas flare and also increase investments in gas processing technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Environmental Science & Pollution Research is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)