A Comparison of Electricity Generation from Combustion and IGCC Plants Using Wood Feedstock

摘要

One of the benefits of using sustainably-grown wood as the fuel in a power generation plant is the lack of emissions to the atmosphere. Wood gasification is considered to be a promising biomass technology. In this paper three variations of IGCC systems undergo techno-economic analysis through the use of tie ECLIPSE process simulation package. Two of the systems have pressurised gasifiers and vary only in their gas clean-up methods; one uses "hot" filtration while the other uses "cold" scrubbing. The third system has an atmospheric pressure gasifier and scrubber gas-cleaning. Each system is simulated for five different gas turbines, using the technical data from commercial gas turbines, first with natural gas as the fuel and then with the "wood" producer gas. The Overall Efficiency and the Break-Even Electricity Selling Price (BEESP) of these IGCC systems are first compared with each other and then with those of other wood-fired technologies. The IGCC systems were found to be more efficient than wood-fired combustion plants, but produced electricity more expensively. However, the capital costs of IGCC systems are uncertain, and so their BEESPs can only be considered as rough guidelines. These systems are not yet competitive with fossil fuel generating plants, but the NFFO-3 tariffs make them economically viable and provide an incentive for their future development.