Decarbonisation options of existing thermal power plant burning natural gas

Abstract

Nowadays power industry faces deepest crises ever with unprecedented prices shocks and climate challenges at the same time. From one hand we realise the need of energy transformation of power industry towards more sustainable future with climate neutral technologies. From the other hand it become obvious that this change could not happen immediately and transition period is needed with some fossil fuel technology still playing an important role as a back-up for renewable energy sources. The biggest question what is the best and cost-efficient way to decarbonise existing thermal power generation. We try to address it on the example of existing combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) power plant fuelled by natural gas. Clearly the following possible options were identified: 1) replacement of natural gas with alternative gases, such as green hydrogen, bio or synthetic methane, 2) carbon capture and underground storage (CCS) in geological formations, 3) carbon capture, liquefaction and export, 4) carbon capture and utilisation (CCU). US giant General Electric in its publication “Decarbonizing gas turbines through carbon capture” is considering similar options for decarbonising of gas turbines. They divide it into two approaches: 1) pre-combustion by using a zero or carbon neutral fuels, such as hydrogen, synthetic methane, biofuels or ammonia and 2) post-combustion by removing carbon from the plant exhaust, using liquid or solid sorbents or oxy-fuel cycles. In this publication we try to compare these different options, despite they are not clearly comparable. For the analysis we take natural gas fired CCGT plant Riga TPP-2 in Latvia with installed capacity of 881 MW (in condensing mode).