Energy and exergy analyses of chemical looping combustion-based 660 MWe supercritical coal-fired power plant

Coal still remains to be the major resource for power production in many countries. Supercritical (SupC) steam generated coal-fired power plants (CFPPs) are found to be superior to subcritical steam generated plants in terms of the overall plant efficiency. Chemical looping combustion (CLC), which is an indirect combustion between fuel and air, is an innovative, inherent CO2 capture and recent technology for power production. In this study, two cases - conventional SupC CFPP without CO2 capture and CLC-based SupC CFPP for high-ash Indian coal have been simulated. Detailed energy and exergy analyses are conducted for both the cases and compared. The study shows that CLC-based capture technology has less energy penalty with Fe2O3 oxygen carrier and little energy gain with CuO and NiO carriers compared to conventional plant without CO2 capture. This study demonstrates the superiority of CLC-based SupC CFPP for CO2 capture over the conventional plant.