Integration of Gasification Process with the Reforming and Oxy-Fuel Technologies for enhancing H2/Electricity Production Capacity with CO2 Capture

IGCC is a pre-combustion technology that can be effectively used to produce both hydrogen and electricity while reducing the GHG (Greenhouse Gas) emissions. As energy and environment are two inseparable fields, the control on GHG emissions through carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) techniques is an attractive option. The integration of current state-of-art power generation technologies (NGCC, USPC, IGCC and oxyfuel) with CCS technology reduces the process performance and also effects the power generation cost. Currently, the pre-combustion (IGCC) process requires higher capital and operational costs compared to the conventional PC based power plants but offers higher performance if CCS technology is implemented on large scale. The NGCC processes, on the other hand, offers higher process performances with CO2 capture but price difference between natural gas and coal limits the wide usage of methane for electricity generation over coal based power plants. Based on the key technical benefits of the NGCC processes and relatively less cost of coal, the integration of natural gas and coal based power generation systems could have a potential to enhance the overall process performance with CCS technology. As the natural gas contains higher volume fraction of H2, the opportunities for integrating the gasification and reforming technologies can be explored to increase the yield of syngas. On the other hand, oxyfuel process produces high purity CO2 during combustion that nullifies the need of additional CO2 capturing unit. Therefore, this project is focused to develop a novel process in Aspen Plus to integrate the state-of-art IGCC, methane reforming and oxyfuel combustion technologies to enhance the process performance while incorporating the CCS technologies to control the GHG emissions. The integration of IGCC and methane reforming technology will be done in a way to utilize the steam generated in the gasification process for the reforming of natural gas that will increase the yield of syngas especially H2. Then the syngas will be treated in the oxy-fuel combustion unit to generate electricity while recovering the high purity CO2. This novel design idea may not only be used to explore the process integration opportunities but also serves as the baseline for the future power generation technologies. The results from the standalone state-of-art technologies will be techno-economically compared with the novel design to assess the design reliability. Some of the process parameters will also be evaluated and compared for the detailed analysis and validation of the developed model