Negative emission potential from biomass/waste combined heat and power plants integrated with CO2 capture: An approach from the national perspective

[Geoengineering News]

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959652624023667

Authors

Beibei Dong, Shuo Wang, Eva Thorin, Qie Sun, Hailong Li

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2024.142917

15 June 2024

Highlights

•The potential range of negative CO2 emissions from CHP plants is identified.

•The costs associated with capturing CO2 from CHP plants are evaluated.

•The biogenic fraction of fuel shows a large impact on net CO2 emissions.

•CO2 capture is operated based on the prerequisite of unchanged heat generation.

Abstract

Integrating carbon dioxide (CO2) capture in biomass or waste-fired combined heat and power (CHP) plants has been considered a key measure to achieve negative emissions. To support decision-making, an accurate assessment of the potential contribution and the associated cost from the national perspective is urgently needed. This paper proposed a bottom-up approach based on a dynamic modelling to evaluate the potental of nationwide negative emissions. As heat supply is often prioritized by CHP plants, unchanged heat generation is a prerequisite of this study. Two operating modes (OMs) for the integration of CO2 capture are investigated, which can represent the upper and lower boundaries of CO2 capture: OM1 aims to maximize the amount of captured CO2, while electricity generation can be sacrificed; OM2 aims to maximize the amount of captured CO2, while the electricity generation is maintained unchanged. Sweden is employed as a case study. Results show that operating CO2 capture in OM1 can achieve 8.7 million ton CO2 nationwide negative emissions a year, while operating CO2 capture in OM2 can generate 4.3 million ton CO2 positive emissions a year, which represents a reduction of 6.3 million tonCO2 a year compared with the reference plant without CO2 capture. The levelized costs of CO2 avoided are 36.9 USD/tonCO2 and 52.0 USD/tonCO2 for OM1 and OM2, respectively. The biogenic fraction of waste has a significant influence on negative emissions. According to the Swedish climate goal about bioenergy with CO2 capture and storage (BECCS), to achieve 3 million ton negative CO2 emissions a year, the minimum biogenic fractions should be 32.8% and 84.3% for operating CO2 capture in OM1 and OM2, respectively; in contrast, to achieve 10 million ton negative emissions a year, biomass and waste-fired CHP plants have to operate CO2 capture in OM1 and the biogenic fraction needs to be over 59.9%.

Source: ScienceDirect