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 €/t_CO2 vs. 85.38 €/t_CO2), which features 89% of CO₂ capture efficiency.