Energy Conversion Engineering Towards Low CO2 Power and Fuels

In this chapter, some proposed power cycles for CO2 capture in coal power plants are presented. These, as discussed in Chapter 11, include post-combustion capture, pre-combustion capture, and oxy-combustion capture cycles. The objective of the coverage is, besides describing the processes in some of these cycles, to evaluate their efficiency and contribution of the capture process toward derating the power production. While similar in principle to those designed for use with natural gas, coal (and other solid fuels) differs in fundamental ways from natural gas because it is consumed in the solid phase and it is often contaminated with sulfur, nitrogen, and ash, among other undesirable substances. Both the nature of the fuel and the contaminants make coal more challenging to use in energy production, and more so when carbon capture is implemented. However, and given its wide availability, lower cost, and higher CO2 emission per unit of useful energy produced, it is imperative to develop this technology.