Optimisation of power stations with carbon capture plants – the trade-off between costs and net power

The addition of carbon capture and storage to a power station will impact the net power generated and increase the cost of electricity produced from the power stations. A method is presented to help design the carbon capture and compression process retrofitted to the power station. It combines simulation, automated heat integration and multi-objective optimisation. The methodology is applied to a coal fired power station combined with potassium carbonate based solvent absorption. To capture 90% of the CO2 emissions the energy penalty, the ratio of the change in efficiency of the power station due to the addition of carbon capture and storage relative to the efficiency of the original power station, can be reduced from 38% to 14% using this method. However to minimise the cost of electricity, more modest reductions in energy penalty of 25%–30% are recommended.

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