Preliminary Performance and Cost Evaluation of Four Alternative Technologies for Post-Combustion CO2 Capture in Natural Gas-Fired Power Plants

The objective of this study is to assess the technical and economic potential of four alternative processes suitable for post-combustion CO2 capture from natural gas-fired power plants. These include: CO2 permeable membranes; molten carbonate fuel cells (MCFCs); pressurized CO2 absorption integrated with a multi-shaft gas turbine and heat recovery steam cycle; and supersonic flow-driven CO2 anti-sublimation and inertial separation. A common technical and economic framework is defined, and the performance and costs of the systems are evaluated based on process simulations and preliminary sizing. A state-of-the-art natural gas combined cycle (NGCC) without CO2 capture is taken as the reference case, whereas the same NGCC designed with CO2 capture (using chemical absorption with aqueous monoethanolamine solvent) is used as a base case. In an additional benchmarking case, the same NGCC is equipped with aqueous piperazine (PZ) CO2 absorption, to assess the techno-economic perspective of an advanced amine solvent. The comparison highlights that a combined cycle integrated with MCFCs looks the most attractive technology, both in terms of energy penalty and economics, i.e., CO2 avoided cost of 49 $/tCO2 avoided, and the specific primary energy consumption per unit of CO2 avoided (SPECCA) equal to 0.31 MJLHV/kgCO2 avoided. The second-best capture technology is PZ scrubbing (SPECCA = 2.73 MJLHV/kgCO2 avoided and cost of CO2 avoided = 68 $/tCO2 avoided), followed by the monoethanolamine (MEA) base case (SPECCA = 3.34 MJLHV/kgCO2 avoided and cost of CO2 avoided = 75 $/tCO2 avoided), and the supersonic flow driven CO2 anti-sublimation and inertial separation system and CO2 permeable membranes. The analysis shows that the integrated MCFC–NGCC systems allow the capture of CO2 with considerable reductions in energy penalty and costs.