Techno-economic evaluation of CO2 transport from a lignite-fired IGCC plant in the Czech Republic

Abstract

This paper investigates different strategies for CO2 conditioning and transport options for the CO2 to be captured at a lignite-fired IGCC in the Czech Republic, including the impact of impurities present in the captured CO2 streams. Four transport cases, combining two transport delivery location scenarios (Czech storage and European transport hub) and two transport technology options (pipeline-based and train-based transport), are designed and evaluated. For the Czech storage case, the cost evaluation of the CO2 conditioning and transport results in costs of 10.5 and 18.3 €/tCO2 for the pipeline and train options respectively. In the European hub scenario, the CO2 conditioning and transport costs are estimated at 15.4 and 24.9 €/tCO2. These results clearly identify the pipeline transport options as the cost-optimal solutions for CO2 transport in both delivery location scenarios, due to the longer transport distances and higher conditioning costs involved for train-based export. Moreover, the comparison of transport delivery location scenarios also shows that if CO2 storage is not possible at the Czech storage location and the CO2 has to pass through the European hub, this would result in an increase of at least 4.9 €/tCO2, plus the additional transport and storage costs after the European hub stage.In addition, further assessments are performed to evaluate the impact of impurities in the CO2 streams from the capture plant on the CO2 conditioning and transport costs for the four combinations of transport scenarios and technology options. The results show that the impurities present in the CO2 streams lead to increases in CO2 conditioning and transport costs ranging from 1.6 to 11.4% (0.2–1.9 €/tCO2). However, the energy and cost impacts associated with the impurities are highly dependent on the transport technology and transport delivery location scenario considered. Furthermore, the process energy and cost performances of two alternative CO2 liquefaction processes, designed to reduce CO2 losses through the purged gas, are also evaluated. These two alternative processes result in higher CO2 conditioning cost than the base case process, which suggests that reducing the CO2 losses compared to the base case would not be a good strategy, unless high costs (70–110 €/tCO2) were spent to capture the CO2 that is purged. Finally, the potential of train-based transport is evaluated beyond the four cases considered by comparing the CO2 conditioning and transport costs of pipeline and train transports as a function of the distance for different train conditioning cost scenarios and different project economic valuation periods. The results show that train-based transport could potentially be a cost-optimal alternative to pipeline-based transport for medium to long distances especially in cases where the additional conditioning costs of train-based transport compared to pipeline are limited, or in cases of financial risk-averse decisions.