CO2 capture from coal-fired power plants based on sodium carbonate slurry; a systems feasibility and sensitivity study

In this work the feasibility of a CO2 capture system based on sodium carbonate-bicarbonate slurry and its integration with a power plant is studied. The results are compared to monoethanolamine (MEA)-based capture systems. Condensing power plant and combined heat and power plant with CO2 capture is modelled to study the feasibility of combined heat and power plant for CO2 capture. Environmental friendly sodium carbonate would be an interesting chemical for CO2 capture. Sodium carbonate absorbs CO2 forming sodium bicarbonate. The low solubility of sodium bicarbonate is a weak point for the sodium carbonate based liquid systems since it limits the total concentration of carbonate. In this study the formation of solid bicarbonate is allowed, thus forming slurry, which can increase the capacity of the solvent. With this the energy requirement of stripping of the solvent could potentially be around 3.22 MJ/kg of captured CO2 which is significantly lower than with MEA based systems which typically have energy consumption around 3.8 MJ/kg of captured CO2. Combined heat and power plants seem to be attractive for CO2 capture because of the high total energy efficiency of the plants. In a condensing power plant the CO2 capture decreases directly the electricity production whereas in a combined heat and power plant the loss can be divided between district heat and electricity according to demand. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.