Exergoeconomic and exergoenvironmental analyses of a combined cycle power plant with chemical looping technology

CO2 capture and storage from energy conversion systems is one option for reducing power plant CO2 emissions to the atmosphere and for limiting the impact of fossil-fuel use on climate change. Among existing technologies, chemical looping combustion (CLC), an oxy-fuel approach, appears to be one of the most promising techniques, providing straightforward CO2 capture with low energy requirements. This paper provides an evaluation of CLC technology from an economic and environmental perspective by comparing it with to a reference plant, a combined cycle power plant that includes no CO2 capture. Two exergy-based methods, the exergoeconomic and the exergoenvironmental analyses, are used to determine the economic and environmental impacts, respectively. The applied methods facilitate the iterative optimization of energy conversion systems and lead towards the improvement of the effectiveness of the overall plant while decreasing the cost and the environmental impact of the generated product. For the plant with CLC, a high increase in the cost of electricity is observed, while at the same time the environmental impact decreases. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.