Techno-Economic Evaluations of Copper-Based Chemical Looping Air Separation System for Oxy-Combustion and Gasification Power Plants with Carbon Capture

Energy and economic penalties for CO2 capture are the main challenges in front of the carbon capture technologies. Chemical Looping Air Separation (CLAS) represents a potential solution for energy and cost-efficient oxygen production in comparison to the cryogenic method. This work is assessing the key techno-economic performances of a CLAS system using copper oxide as oxygen carrier integrated in coal and lignite-based oxy-combustion and gasification power plants. For comparison, similar combustion and gasification power plants using cryogenic air separation with and without carbon capture were considered as benchmark cases. The assessments were focused on large scale power plants with 350-500 MW net electricity output and 90% CO2 capture rate. As the results show, the utilization of CLAS system in coal and lignite-based oxy-combustion and gasification power plants is improving the key techno-economic indicators e.g., increasing the energy efficiency by about 5-10%, reduction of specific capital investments by about 12-18%, lower cost of electricity by about 8-11% as well as lower CO2 avoidance cost by about 17-27%. The highest techno-economic improvements being noticed for oxy-combustion cases since these plants are using more oxygen than gasification plants.