Water-energy-carbon nexus in Illinois - water supply risk for carbon capture

Abstract

Recently, University of Illinois has been working on the front-end engineering design (FEED) of carbon capture facilities for several power plants in Illinois. While carbon capture facilities often would need cooling water for operation, the water demand for power plants carbon capture facilities has not received much attention. For the two real-world FEED design projects (the Prairie State Generating Company (PSGC) and the 21st Century Power plant (21CPP)), we comprehensively analyze the water demand and supply risks for the two carbon capture facilities. Both power plants and the associated carbon capture facilities are expected to run for decades and thus climate change would play key role in managing water supply risks which is important for informing the engineering design of water system and cooling system of the carbon capture facilities. Both historic and future hydrologic conditions are examined to determine water supply risks. Future hydrologic conditions are simulated using hydrologic models and global circulation models (GCM) results. The climate scenarios are adopted from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Projection Phase 5 (CMIP5) datasets. Three representative concentration pathways (RCPs), i.e. RCP2.6, RCP4.5, and RCP8.5, are employed for exploring different future carbon dioxide emission scenarios. This work explores the tradeoff between water footprint and carbon footprint of power plants in Illinois and provides scientific information for water management and carbon management and for engineering design of the real-world carbon capture facilities.