Analysis of CO₂ Emissions in the Whole Production Process of Coal-Fired Power Plant

The linear programming (LP) model has been used to identify a cost-effective strategy for reducing CO2 emissions in power plants considering coal washing, pollutant removal, and carbon capture processes, thus CO2 emissions in different production processes can be obtained. The direct emissions (combustion emissions and desulfurization emissions) and indirect emissions (pollutant removal, coal washing, and carbon capture) of CO2 were all considered in the LP model. Three planning periods were set with different CO2 emission control desirability to simulate CO2 emissions of the different reduction requirements. The results can reflect the CO2 emissions across the whole production process of a coal-fired power plant overall. The simulation results showed that for a coal-fired power plant containing two 1000 MW ultra super-critical sets, when the desirability was 0.9, the CO2 total emissions were 2.15, 1.84, and 1.59 million tons for the three planning periods. The research results suggest that the methodology of LP combined with fuzzy desirability function is applicable to represent the whole production process of industry sectors such as coal-fired power plants. The government policy makers could predict CO2 emissions by this method and use the results as a reference to conduct effective industrial and energy structure adjustment