Techno-economic prospects for CO2 capture from a Solid Oxide Fuel Cell - Combined Heat and Power plant. Preliminary results

Potentially low-cost CO(2) capture may facilitate pre-commercial solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) technology entering the energy market. The aim of this study was to compare and evaluate the techno-economic performance of CO(2) capture from industrial SOFC-Combined Heat and Power plant (CHP). CO(2) is captured by using oxyfuel afterburner and conventional air separation technologies. The results were compared to both SOFC-CHP plants without CO(2) capture and conventional gas engines CHP without CO(2) capture. The system modeling was performed using Cycle Tempo software. Our results show that while SOFC-CHP without CO(2) capture requires a low SOFC stack production cost of about 310 $/ kW to compete with conventional GE-CHP, SOFC-CHP with CO(2) capture using large scale air separation unit can compete with GE-CHP at higher stack production costs when the CO(2) price is above 37 $/t CO(2). CO(2) avoidance cost of 50 $/t CO(2) can be achieved at a stack production cost of 410 $/kWe. The results indicate that CO(2) capture, even with commercially available technologies, can economically facilitate SOFC entering the energy market in a carbon-constrained society. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.