Techno-economic and environmental assessment of flexible operation for decarbonized super-critical power plants using reactive gas–liquid absorption

Abstract

Reactive gas–liquid absorption is currently one of the most technological and commercial mature decarbonization solution for energy-intensive industrial applications. This decarbonization system is based on chemical absorption - desorption cycle using alkanolamine solutions. In this work, the reactive gas–liquid absorption was assessed from techno-economic and environmental perspective for decarbonization of super-critical power plants as well as to improve the plant time flexibility. The assessed coal and lignite plant concepts generate 1000 MW net output with 90% carbon capture rate. As benchmark cases, the plant designs without CO2 capture were also assessed to quantify the decarbonization energy and cost penalties. Detailed evaluations cover the following aspects: decarbonized power generation by chemical scrubbing with / without solvent storage facilities; set-up of an integrated assessment methodology; evaluation of main techno-economic and environmental performance indicators. A key novelty element of this work represents the usage of solvent storage to improve the flexibility of decarbonized power plant. Base-load operation and flexible part-load operation with lean & rich solvent storage were both evaluated to assess the flexibility impact on overall performance indicators. The time flexible solution based on solvent storage reduces the specific capital cost by about 11% and the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) by about 7–9%.