Perspectives of pre-combustion CCS systems for central Europe

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) has a potential to play a significant role in the future of power generation in Europe, at least in a short to intermediate term. Among the reasons are necessity and also growing political willingness to limit the CO2 emissions while it appears that fossil fuels are to remain an important source for fuel and electricity production. CCS technologies however mean inevitable technical, energy and economic penalty, especially since most common fossil fuel for power generation in the Central Europe is lignite. We are presenting the focus and first results of a recently initiated Norway Grants project Study of CCS Pilot Technologies for Coal Fired Power Plants in the Czech Republic . In this project, different capture technology alternatives and various options for the transport of the captured CO2 are investigated. With the data for post combustion and oxyfuel combustion taken from previous project here the main emphasis is put onto various options for pre-combustion Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) systems. The investigated pre-combustion CCS IGCC systems are based on gasification of central European lignite which has LHV around 16.5 MJ/kg and ash content up to 20%. There is considered a Shell gasification technology with gas quench, utilizing heat from syngas cooling also as superheater and reheater. Nominal power output in this case study is approximately 250 MW and the gas turbine is thus based on current industrial turbine with nominal output 187 MWe (Siemens SGT5-2000E). Different capture technologies are being investigated and they include different modifications of solvent capture (based mainly on Rectisol system using chilled methanol). This is being compared with a low temperature capture method and a capture using various CO2 permeable or H2 permeable membranes. Last but not least different alternatives for CO2 transport and storage or utilization into both local and international sites are considered