Lignite‐fired air‐blown IGCC systems with pre‐combustion CO2 capture

Detailed analyses based on mass and energy balances of lignite‐fired air‐blown gasification‐based combined cycles with CO₂ pre‐combustion capture are presented and discussed in this work. The thermodynamic assessment is carried out with a proprietary code integrated with Aspen Plus^® to carefully simulate the selective removal of both H₂S and CO₂ in the acid gas removal station. The work focuses on power plants with two combustion turbines, with lower and higher turbine inlet temperatures, respectively, as topping cycle. A high‐moisture lignite, partially dried before feeding the air‐blown gasification system, is used as fuel input. Because the raw lignite presents a very low amount of sulfur, a particular technique consisting of an acid gas recycle to the absorber, is adopted to fulfill the requirements related to the presence of H₂S in the stream to the Claus plant and in the CO₂‐rich stream to storage. Despite the operation of the H₂S removal section representing a significant issue, the impact on the performance of the power plant is limited. The calculations show that a significant lignite pre‐drying is necessary to achieve higher efficiency in case of CO₂ capture. In particular, considering a wide range (10–30 wt.%) of residual moisture in the dried lignite, higher heating value (HHV) efficiency presents a decreasing trend, with maximum values of 35.15% and 37.12% depending on the type of the combustion turbine, even though the higher the residual moisture in the dried coal, the lower the extraction of steam from the heat recovery steam cycle. On the other hand, introducing the specific primary energy consumption for CO₂ avoided (SPECCA) as a measure of the energy cost related to CO₂ capture, lower values were predicted when gasifying dried lignite with higher residual moisture content. In particular, a SPECCA value as low as 2.69 MJ/kg_CO2 was calculated when gasifying lignite with the highest (30 wt.%) residual moisture content in a power plant with the advanced combustion turbine. Ultimately, focusing on the power plants with the advanced combustion turbine, air‐blown gasification of lignite brings about a reduction in HHV efficiency equal to almost 1.5 to 2.8 percentage points, depending on the residual moisture in the dried lignite, if compared with similar cases where bituminous coal is used as fuel input. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.