TECHNO-ECONOMIC EVALUATION OF CALCIUM LOOPING CYCLE FOR CO2 CAPTURE FROM SUPER-CRITICAL POWER PLANTS

Calcium looping is an innovative CO2 capture process using solid CaO as sorbent to remove CO2 from flue gases. In the work presented in this paper, the calcium looping cycle was applied to a super-critical power plant to capture CO2 (purity >95%). This capture technology is based on calcium looping process which uses CaO for CO2 capture. Calcium looping process has very good techno-economic results compared to other CO2 capture options (e.g. gas-liquid absorption) and has many advantages, one of those being: the raw material used for CO2 capture (limestone) is abundant and cheap, the high carbon capture rate (>90%) and the relatively small efficiency penalty that it imposes on the power/industrial process. The energy penalty for carbon capture is about 9 net electricity percentage points. Compared to the design without carbon capture, the specific capital investment is increasing with about 48%, the operational & maintenance (O & M) costs are increasing with 60% and the levelised cost of electricity is increasing with 54%.