Techno-economic evaluation of advanced IGCC lignite coal fuelled power plants with CO_2 capture

摘要

The techno-economic evaluation of four novel integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) power plants fuelled with low rank lignite coal with CO_2 capture facility has been investigated using ECLIPSE process simulator. The performance of the proposed plants was compared with two conventional IGCC plants with and without CO_2 capture. The proposed plants include an advanced CO_2 capturing process based on the Absorption Enhanced Reforming (AER) reaction and the regeneration of sorbent materials avoiding the need for sulphur removal component, shift reactor and/or a high temperature gas cleaning process. The results show that the proposed CO_2 capture plants efficiencies were 18.5-21% higher than the conventional IGCC CO_2 capture plant. For the proposed plants, the CO_2 capture efficiencies were found to be within 95.8-97%. The CO_2 capture efficiency for the conventional IGCC plant was 87.7%. The specific investment costs for the proposed plants were between 1207 and 1479€/kW_e and 1620€/kW_e and 1134 €/kW_e for the conventional plants with and without CO_2 capture respectively. Overall the proposed IGCC plants are cleaner, more efficient and produce electricity at cheaper price than the conventional IGCC process.