Techno-Economic Analysis of a Carbon Capture Chemical Looping Combustion Power Plant

High energy penalty and cost are major obstacles in the widespread use of CO₂ capture techniques for reducing CO₂ emissions. Chemical looping combustion (CLC) is an innovative means of achieving CO₂ capture with less cost and low energy penalty. This paper conducts a detailed techno-economic analysis of a natural gas-fired CLC-based power plant. The power plant capacity is 1000 MW_th gross power on a lower heating value basis. The analysis was done using Aspen Plus. The cost analysis was done by considering the plant location to be in the United Arab Emirates. The plant performance was analyzed by using the cost of equipment, cost of electricity, payback period, and the cost of capture. The performance of the CLC system was also compared with a conventional natural gas combined cycle plant of the same capacity integrated with post combustion CO₂ capture technology. The analysis shows that the CLC system had a plant efficiency of 55.6%, electricity cost of 5.5 cents/kWh, payback time of 3.77 years, and the CO₂ capture cost of $27.5/ton. In comparison, a similar natural gas combined cycle (NGCC) power plant with CO₂ capture had an efficiency of 50.6%, cost of electricity of 6.1 cents/kWh, payback period of 4.57 years, and the capture cost of $42.9/ton. This analysis shows the economic advantage of the CLC integrated power plants.