CO2 capture in coal-fired power plants—Impact on plant performance

In order to reduce CO2 emissions from a power plant, CO2 can either be captured from the flue gases or from the syngas stream in a gasification plant. In this paper, the authors compare the effect of CO2 capture on power plant performance for a pulverised coal power plant with post-combustion CO2 capture, an Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) with either separate or co-capture of CO2 and H2S, as well as an oxy-fuel power plant with cryogenic CO2 purification. The highest impact on power plant performance is observed for post-combustion capture, while CO2 purification in oxy-fuel combustion has the lowest specific energy penalty for CO2 capture of all investigated options. All processes were simulated with Aspen Plus.