Economic evaluation of pre-combustion CO2-capture in IGCC power plants by porous ceramic membranes

Pre-combustion-carbon-capture is one of the three main routes for the mitigation of CO2-emissions by fossil fueled power plants. Based on the data of a detailed technical evaluation of CO2-capture by porous ceramic membranes (CM) and ceramic membrane reactors (WGSMR) in an Integrated-Gasification-Combined-Cycle (IGCC) power plant this paper focuses on the economic effects of CO2-abatement. First the results of the process simulations are presented briefly. The analysis is based on a comparison with a reference IGCC without CO2-capture (dry syngas cooling, bituminous coal, efficiency of 47.4%). In addition, as a second reference, an IGCC process with CO2 removal based on standard Selexol-scrubbing is taken into account. The most promising technology for CO2-capture by membranes in IGCC applications is the combination of a water gas shift reactor and a H2-selective membrane into one water gas shift membrane reactor. For the WGSRM-case efficiency losses can be limited to about 6%-points (including losses for CO2 compression) for a CO2 separation degree of 90%. This is a severe reduction of the efficiency loss compared to Selexol (10.3% points) or IGCC–CM (8.6% points). The economic evaluation is based on a detailed analysis of investment and operational costs. Parameters like membrane costs and lifetime, costs of CO2-certificates and annual operating hours are taken into account. The purpose of these evaluations is to identify the minimum cost of electricity for the different capture cases for the variation of the boundary conditions. Fixing 90% CO2 separation the analysis identifies clearly that the economic minimum for cost of electricity and maximum thermodynamic efficiencies do not coincide. The cost of electricity for the reference case was 67€/MWh and for the WGSMR integration with 90% CO2 separation 57€/MWh, if certificate costs of 30€/tCO2, membrane costs of 300€/m2 and 8000 operating hours/year are considered. Further studies on the sensitivity of cost of electricity on the technical and commercial boundary conditions will be presented.

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