Techno-economic analysis of a CO2 capture plant integrated with a commercial scale combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) power plant

• A post-combustion CO2 capture plant model has been developed and has been extensively validated at pilot scale.
• Capture plant model has been scaled up to meet the requirement of a commercial 427 MW CCGT power plant.
• Sensitivity analysis has been conducted to reduce thermal energy requirement to 4.1 GJ/tonne CO2.
• Levelized cost of the electricity from CCGT power plant is increased by 47% when CO2 capure process is added.

In this study, a combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) power plant and a CO2 capture plant have been modelled in GateCycle® and in Aspen Plus® environments respectively. The capture plant model is validated with experimental data from the pilot plant at the University of Texas at Austin and then has been scaled up to meet the requirement of the 427 MWe CCGT power plant. A techno-economical evaluation study has been performed with the capture plant model integrated with flue gas pre-processing and CO2 compression sections. Sensitivity analysis was carried out to assess capture plant response to changes in key operating parameters and equipment design. The study indicates which parameters are the most relevant (namely absorber packing height and regenerator operating pressure) and how, with a proper choice of the operating conditions, both the energy requirement for solvent regeneration and the cost of electricity may be reduced.