Life cycle environmental and economic analysis of pulverized coal oxy-fuel combustion combining with calcium looping process or chemical looping air separation

This paper presents multi-criteria environmental and economic analyses of pulverized coal power plants with various advanced CO2 capture and separation (CCS) technologies, including oxy-fuel combustion (Oxy), calcium looping post-combustion capture (CaL), combination of Oxy with CaL (Oxy-CaL) and Oxy with chemical looping air separation (Oxy-CLAS). The life cycle analysis (LCA) and techno-economic analysis (TEA) are integrated with Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) approaches. This methodology is applied to forecast the potential of incorporating CaL or CLAS into oxy-fuel combustion and identify the most promising CCS technology option for pulverized coal power plants from the perspectives of different stakeholders. The results show that application of CCS reduces the ecosystem quality and the human health impacts, but increases the resources use and yields an economic penalty of $12.76∼$33.33 per ton of CO2 avoidance. From the perspective of industry only, CCS has an unfavorable effect on the performance of the pulverized coal power plant, and the promotion in carbon price is critical for CCS to attract the support from industry. In terms of the four CCS technologies, Oxy-CLAS comprehensively performs the best, followed by Oxy. Decrement of consumption of Ca-based sorbents is critical for Oxy-CaL to outrank Oxy.