(685g) Effects of CO2 Methanation on Economic Feasibility and Global Climate Change in Coal-Fired Power Plants

The continued use of fossil fuels due to industrial development, economic and population growth has increased the concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere that causes climate change. The carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology has been developed to mitigate the increase of CO₂ in the atmosphere. The CO₂ capture and utilization (CCU) technology has been proposed to resolve the limitation of the storage capacity of the captured CO₂. This study presented a techno-economic feasibility of 500 MW_e coal-fired circulating fluidized-bed (CFB) power plants including CCU. An amine absorber unit (AAU) and a CO₂ processing unit (CPU) were used to capture CO₂, in air- and oxy- combustion CFBs, respectively. Only 2% and 5% of the captured CO₂ were methanized with H₂ because of the excessive consumption of electricity in water alkaline electrolysis (AEL) that produces H₂. The effects of CO₂ methanation with H₂ on the global climate change were investigated for coal-fired power plants around the world.