Techno-economic Performance of State-of-the-Art Oxyfuel Technology for Low-CO₂ Coal-fired Electricity Production

This work presents a techno-economic analysis of a 2015 state-of-the art ASC PC oxyfuel power plant. This work adds to the existing body of techno-economic studies on coal oxycombustion that use less advanced oxyfuel technology and/or steam cycles. The study shows that this oxyfuel configuration has a net efficiency about 2%-pt. higher than a similar ASC PC plant with MEA postcombustion technology. This is partly due to the high gross efficiency of the oxyfuel power plant. The capital costs, LCOE, and cost of CO₂ avoided of the oxyfuel configuration are, however, slightly higher than those of the MEA configuration, despite the high efficiency of the oxyfuel plant. This means that the good technical performance of this state of the art oxy-fired coal plant is not necessarily translated into equally favourable economic performance. Rather, oxyfuel and PCC performance are rather comparable.