Techno-economic analysis of a natural gas combined cycle integrated with a Ca-Cu looping process for low CO₂ emission power production

A techno-economic analysis of a natural gas combined cycle integrated with a pre-combustion CO2 capture process based on the Ca-Cu process has been carried out. An extensive calculation of the balances of the entire power plant has been done, including the results obtained from a 1-D pseudo homogeneous model for the fixed bed reactors that compose the Ca-Cu process. Moreover, a methodology developed by the authors is here presented for calculating the cost of the electricity produced and of the CO2 avoided. This methodology has been used to perform the economic analysis of the Ca-Cu based power plant and to optimize the size of the Ca-Cu reactors and the pressure drop in critical heat exchangers. An electricity cost of 82.6 €/MWh has been obtained for the Ca-Cu based power plant, which is 2.2 €/MWh below the benchmark power plant based on an Auto Thermal Reformer with an MDEA absorption process for CO2 capture. The improved performance of the Ca-Cu based power plant in terms of electric efficiency and reduced capital cost expenditure is the reason for the reduced electricity costs. Moreover, a lower cost of CO2 avoided is also obtained for the Ca-Cu plant with respect to the benchmark (80.75 €/tCO2 vs. 85.38 €/tCO2), which features 89% of CO2 capture efficiency.