Techno-Economic Evaluation of Biomass Fired or Co-Fired Power Plant with Post-Combustion CO₂ Capture

Publication Overview

The study aimed to investigate options and evaluate the techno-economic performance of a biomass fired, or coal co-fired with biomass, power plant based on current state of the art boiler and steam generation equipment incorporating CO₂ capture technology. It is expected that the study should provide the performance of the plant assuming the need to capture at least 90% of the total CO₂ emissions. Currently, the state of the art largest standalone biomass fired combustion power plant (i.e. between 100 to 250 MWe net) offered commercially is based on circulating fluidized bed (CFB) technology. In the mid-range (i.e. between 30 to 90MWe net), the commercially offered state of the art technology would be based on a bubbling bed fluidized bed (BFB) technology. For less than 50MWe net, a stoker fired (fixed bed) system is still considered competitive compared to any fluidized bed technology. For direct co firing of biomass and coal, the technical operating limit of co-firing biomass is about 10-20% of the total thermal input.

Publication Summary

The current study evaluated the techno-economic performance of incorporating CO₂ capture and storage in a biomass fired power plant on the following four cases namely:

• Case 1: nominal 500 MWe (net) co-firing of biomass and coal in PF power plant.
• Case 2: nominal 500 MWe (net) co-firing of biomass and coal in CFB power plant.
• Case 3: nominal 250 MWe (net) circulating fluidized bed standalone biomass power plant.
• Case 4: nominal 75 MWe (net) bubbling fluidized bed standalone biomass power plant. ii The capture technologies to be evaluated were limited to post-combustion capture using a standard MEA solvent. The main considerations were: (a.) Economics (CAPEX and OPEX), (b.) Overall mass and energy balance, (c.) Impact of the CCS to the Overall Efficiency, (d.) Environmental performance.