Integration and evaluation of a power plant with a CaO-based CO2 capture system

This paper explores the integration and evaluation of a power plant with a CaO-based CO2 capture system. There is a great amount of recoverable heat in the CaO-based CO2 capture process. Five cases for the possible integration of a 600 MW power plant with CaO-based CO2 capture process are considered in this paper. When the system is configured so that recovered heat is used to replace part of the boiler heat load (Case 2), modelling not only shows that this is the system recovering the most heat of 1008.8 MW but also results in the system with the lowest net power output of 446 MW and the second lowest of efficiency of 34.1%. It is indicated that system performance depends both on the amount of heat recovery and the type of heat utilization. When the system is configured so that a 400 MW power plant is built using the recovered heat (Case 4), modelling shows that this is the system with the most net power output of 846 MW, the highest efficiency of 36.8%, the lowest cost of electricity of 54.3 €/MWh and the lowest cost of CO2 avoided of 28.9 €/tCO2. This new built steam cycle will not affect the operation of the reference plant which vents its CO2 to the atmosphere, highly reducing the connection between the CO2 capture process and the reference plant which vents its CO2 to the atmosphere. The average cost of electricity and the cost of CO2 avoided of the five cases are about 58.9 €/kWh and 35.9 €/tCO2, respectively.