Modeling and economic evaluation of the integration of carbon capture and storage technologies into coal to liquids plants

This paper analyzes the technical and economic feasibility of the integration of Fischer-Tropsch process based Coal to Liquid (CTL) plants with Carbon Capture and Storage Technologies (CCS). CTL plants could be multipurpose, and for this reason, starting from coal can produce different energy products like liquid fuels, such as diesel and gasoline, chemicals, electricity and hydrogen. Different plant configurations are possible especially in the case of integration with CCS technologies. Obviously, the choice of the optimal process configuration is one that better meets technical and economical requirements. In order to make a first assessment, a screening of suitable technologies has been made. The CTL facility study here proposed is based on commercial coal gasification and Fischer-Tropsch technologies. The system configuration selected and the plant performance has been evaluated using Aspen Plus software. The plant size considered is about 10,000 bbl/d of liquid fuel products, equivalent to a consumption of about 4500 ton/d of coal fed to the gasification island. The declared objective is to evaluate the potential of the identified plant and to perform a first economic evaluation. The ultimate goal is to determine the specific cost of produced liquid fuels and to evaluate the economic performance of the system. The economic analysis was done to estimate the Internal Rate of Return (IRR), the payback period and the net present value for configurations with CCS or without CO2 capture. Results shows that the CCS introduction in CTL plants has a lighter impact on plant costs and performance since CO2 capture it is already included in the base plant. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.