Techno-economic assessment of decarbonized biogas catalytic reforming for flexible hydrogen and power production

Abstract

Biogas got significant attention as a promising renewable energy source and an energy-efficient way of converting various biowastes into energy carriers. As relevant research contributions of present analysis, the detailed technical and economic assessment of decarbonized biogas catalytic reforming process for flexible hydrogen & power generation was assessed. The production capacity of evaluated concepts is 50,000 Nm3/h high-hydrogen (>99.95% vol.) and up to 40 MW net power output. Reactive gas–liquid (using one illustrative amine) and the gas–solid (iron & calcium looping) processes are used for pre-combustion CO2 capture. The overall process simulation results for investigated designs were exploited for the calculation of techno-economic key performance indexes. As results show, the iron/calcium looping systems are very promising in terms of increasing the overall efficiency (up to 2.5 net percentage points), the plant decarbonization rate (72–75 vs. 64%), reducing CO2 emissions (120–144 kg/MWh vs. 175 kg/MWh) and improving key economic parameters (e.g., lower hydrogen cost by at least 5%, CO2 capture cost by at least 25%) than the chemical scrubbing concept (benchmark). Furthermore, the overall hydrogen and power flexibility brings relevant advantages e.g., higher cumulative energy efficiency, improved cyclic operation etc.