Techno-economic evaluation of an ammonia-based post-combustion process integrated with a state-of-the-art coal-fired power plant

• A detailed design of a full-scale ammonia-based post-combustion capture process is presented.
• The ammonia-based capture process is integrated with a coal-fired power plant, which results in an efficiency penalty of 9.2%-points.
• The specific cost of capture for the capture process when integrated with a coal-fired power plant is estimated to be 35€/tCO2.

A techno-economic evaluation of the application of an ammonia-based post-combustion CO2 capture system to an existing, state-of-the-art, coal-fired power plant. The study comprised an assessment of the ammonia-based capture process together with a detailed cost analysis, based on which the overall design of the capture process is presented, including a power plant integration strategy and estimates of the specific CO2 capture cost (€/tCO2). The evaluations of the power plant and the CO2 capture plant were based on process modeling. The cost analysis was based on the installed cost of each unit in the equipment list derived from the process simulation, which was determined using detailed-factor estimation. We show that the steam required for a CO2 capture efficiency of 90% lowers the electric output from 408.0 MWel to 341.8 MWel. The capital expenditure related to the retrofit of the reference power plant with CO2 capture is 230M€ and the operating expenditure is determined to be 66.5M€/year, corresponding to a relative capture cost of 35€/tCO2. Furthermore, the present work proposes design improvements that may reduce the cost of capture to 31€/tCO2.