The multi-period optimisation of an amine-based CO2 capture process integrated with a super-critical coal-fired power station for flexible operation

• Dynamic modelling and optimisation of decarbonised coal-fired power plant.
• Operational strategies for improved process flexibility re explored.
• Time-varying solvent regeneration can reduce costs of low carbon energy.
• A relative 16% increase in profitability is observed.

In this work, we present a model of a super-critical coal-fired power plant integrated with an amine-based CO2 capture process. We use this model to solve a multi-period dynamic optimisation problem aimed at decoupling the operation of the power plant from the efficiency penalty imposed by the CO2 capture plant, thus providing the power plant sufficient flexibility to exploit price variation within an electricity market. We evaluate four distinct scenarios: load following, solvent storage, exhaust gas by-pass and time-varying solvent regeneration. The objective is to maximise the decarbonised power plant's short run marginal cost profitability. It is found that while the solvent storage option provides a marginal improvement of 4% in comparison to the load following scenario, the exhaust gas bypass scenario results in a profit reduction of 17% whereas the time-varying solvent regeneration option increases the profitability of the power plant by 16% in comparison to the reference scenario.