(91h) Decarbonisation in Energy Production

Currently, CO2 emissions from power generation make up one of the largest contributions to global greenhouse gas emissions. For power generation, the CO2 emission is centralised, with a large volume, but low in concentration. There are three basic decarbonisation routes to deal with this problem. These are pre-combustion, post-combustion and the oxy-combustion routes. For each route, different CO2 separation technologies can be exploited. This work studies different decarbonisation routes with both conventional CO2 separation technologies and novel pre-combustion routes. Based on this, further studies on the issue of the CO2 recovery have also been carried out.

In conclusion, a wide range of decarbonisation designs can be applied with power generation. Among them, the oxy-combustion and the pre-combustion with novel CO2 separation technology have the best performances. The site power generation loss due to the CO2 capture is roughly proportional to the CO2 recovery. This indicates that to treat the CO2 recovery as a degree of freedom might be more sensible than as a fixed specification in the decarbonisation power generation design as is the case at present.