Parametric study and benchmarking of NGCC, coal and biomass power cycles integrated with MEA-based post-combustion CO₂ capture

A comparative study of MEA-based post-combustion CO₂ capture has been performed for NGCC, coal and biomass power cycles. With particular focus on overall electric efficiency and electricity output losses per unit of captured CO₂, the performance of the power cycles in consideration have been calculated and compared with respect to variation in desorber pressure in the capture process. For each of the cases, overall efficiency is rather insensitive to desorber pressure, as no major energy gains are obtained in the trade-off between steam extraction pressure, reboiler duty and CO₂ compression ratio. Whereas NGCC shows the lower efficiency penalty (7.2-7.4 %-units) at 90% CO₂ capture ratio, the coal and biomass cases still show lower specific electricity output losses per unit of captured CO ₂ (20-25% lower than for NGCC), despite higher efficiency penalties. Hence, when considering specific CO₂ capture and compression work as comparison criterion, the coal and biomass plants turn out more favourable than NGCC, despite higher efficiency penalty.