This title appears in the Scientific Report : 2021 
Techno-economic Assessment of Hybrid Post-combustion Carbon Capture Systems in Coal-fired Power Plants and Steel Plants
Wang, Yuan (Corresponding author)
Technoökonomische Systemanalyse; IEK-3
Jülich Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH Znetralbibliothek, Verlag 2021
IV, xx, 230
Dissertation, RWTH Aachen University, 2020
978-3-95806-545-1
Book
Dissertation / PhD Thesis
Societally Feasible Transformation Pathways
Effective System Transformation Pathways
Schriften des Forschungszentrums Jülich Reihe Energie & Umwelt / Energy & Environment 534
OpenAccess
Please use the identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/2128/28041 in citations.


Post-combustion carbon capture technology is seen as an indispensable option for global CO2mitigation. Nevertheless, the benchmark post-combustion carbon capture technology, i.e. theMEA-based chemical absorption technology, has been reported to be rather energy-intensive.Meanwhile, the performance of the gas permeation membrane technology, one of the emergingalternative carbon capture technologies, has also been found to be restricted by the membraneproperties, especially when it is designed to be applied in industrial-scale plants. As a result, theapplications of the post-combustion carbon capture technology in the power and industrialsectors are faced with great resistance. On the other hand, the research of post-combustioncarbon capture for industry is found to lag behind the power sector. The objective of this work isto advance the feasibility of post-combustion carbon capture technology as well as contribute tothe study of carbon capture in the steelmaking industry.In order to do this, two types of hybrid membrane/MEA carbon capture systems (Hybrid D1 &D2) were designed in Aspen Plus®. In the Hybrid D1 system, a single-stage membrane iscombined with an MEA system while a cascaded membrane system and an MEA system arecombined in the Hybrid D2 system. For comparison, two widely studied standalone capturesystems (cascaded membrane & MEA) were also modeled. The Polyactive® membrane wasselected to be the investigated membrane material. These carbon capture systems weredeployed in a reference coal-fired power plant and a reference iron & steel plant, respectively. Amodel of the power plant was simulated using EBSILON® Professional to represent the detailedoperation. Pinch analysis was used to analyze the potential for waste heat integration of thecapture systems into the water-steam cycle. In addition, the performances of the capturesystems when the power plant is operated at part-load were investigated. As for the iron & steelplant, the energy use network and point sources of CO2 emissions inside the plant wereanalyzed so as to specify the boundary condition for carbon capture. A cost model based on thediscounted cash flow approach was developed for economic analysis.In the power plant, it is revealed that the Hybrid D1 system is neither an energy-efficient nor acost-effective design. The Hybrid D2 system, however, has shown to lead to both a lowerefficiency penalty (9.7 %-pts) and a lower CO2 avoidance cost (48.8 €/tCO2) than the standalonecascaded membrane and MEA systems in the power plant. A basic principle for the design of ahybrid system is concluded according to the result.In the iron & steel plant, the Hybrid D2 system leads to the lowest CO2 avoidance cost (53.9€/tCO2) but the differences in the avoidance costs of different capture systems are insignificantconsidering the uncertainty of the cost model. It is also found that the steam supply strategy haspronounced impacts on the cost competitiveness of a carbon capture system. In addition, it isdisclosed that an overall lower CO2 avoidance cost can be achieved by deploying multiple typesof capture systems to deal with different point sources of CO2 emissions as compared todeploying only one single type of capture system.