Coal with CCS to Electricity: Baseline Performance, Cost and Sensitivities

The United States Department of Energy Office of Fossil Energy, in conjunction with its National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), conducts research, development and demonstration of advanced fossil-based power generation technologies. In the process of identifying research, design and demonstration (RD&D) needs and evaluating the potential for improvement upon state of the art (SOA) technologies, it is often necessary to first establish a comprehensive baseline for performance and cost estimation. To this end, NETL has developed a set of studies titled, “Cost and Performance Baselines for Fossil Energy Plants.”  This year, an update was published to Volume 1, “Bituminous Coal and Natural Gas to Electricity”.  In Volume 1a, coal generation is evaluated for pulverized coal (PC) plants and natural gas generation is evaluated for natural gas combined cycles (NGCC).  All technology types are evaluated both with and without carbon capture and storage (CCS).  The analyses were performed on a consistent technical and economic basis that accurately reflects current market conditions for coal and natural gas fueled plants.  The cost and performance data were compiled from published reports, information obtained from vendor quotes and users of the technology, and data from designing and building utility projects.

This presentation first presents the design basis of and the results for supercritical PC cases that include recent performance and cost information for several key process components including CO₂ capture, compression, and steam turbines. The presentation walks through the plant configuration highlighting some of the parameters in each section along with a summary of the plant performance and cost. 

Additionally, cost, performance and market parameters are examined to identify the key drivers for the cost of electricity and the cost of CO₂ capture for the coal plants with CCS.  These parameters include CO₂ capture system cost, solvent regeneration steam requirements, compression system cost, compression power, CO₂ transport cost, CO₂ storage cost, financial assumptions, and CO₂ capture rate.