Techno-economic and exergetic assessment of an oxy-fuel power plant fueled by syngas produced by chemical looping CO2 and H2O dissociation

Natural Gas Combined Cycle (NGCC) is presently the most efficient fossil fuel power plant but with no carbon capture. The efficiency penalty resulting from the integration of carbon capture and storage (CCS) is, however, a major challenge. The present study proposes an oxyfuel NGCC integrated with Chemical looping (CL) syngas production (OXY-CC-CL), for power generation with CCS. The chemical looping CO2/H2O dissociation would produce syngas (CO and H-2 with methane reduction step in redox cycle) from recycled exhaust gas for additional power generation within the power plant. This integration of CL unit with the existing conventional oxy fuel power plant would be expected to decrease the efficiency penalty. Therefore, the thermodynamic (both energetic and exergetic), economic and environmental performance of the integrated chemical looping unit oxyfuel NGCC power plant with carbon capture were assessed. A 500 MW scale plant was modelled and compared with a conventional NGCC and oxyfuel NGCC plant with carbon capture (OXY-CC). The net efficiency penalty of the proposed OXY-CC-CL unit was 4.2% compared to an efficiency penalty of 11.8% of the OXY-CC unit with a 100% carbon capture. The energetic efficiency obtained hence was 50.7%, together with an exergetic efficiency of 47.1%. Heat integration via pinch analysis revealed the possibility to increase the system energetic efficiency up to 61%. Sensitivity analyses were performed to identify relative impacts of system operational parameters. The specific capital cost of the proposed OXY-CC-CL was obtained as 2455 $/kW, with a corresponding LCOE of 128 $/MWh without carbon credits.