Environomic optimal design of power plants with CO2 capture

Life cycle impact assessment indicators are integrated for studying the process integration of renewable resources and CO2 capture and storage (CCS) in power plants. Besides the expected reduction in global warming potential (GWP), CCS induces energy and cost penalties. This paper presents a systematic multi-objective optimisation framework for the optimal design of power plants with CO2 capture considering environomic criteria to systematically assess the trade-off between environmental impacts, efficiency and costs. Life cycle assessment is combined with flowsheeting, energy integration, economic evaluation and multi-objective optimisation techniques. Post- and pre-combustion CO2 capture options for electricity generation processes, using fossil and renewable resources, are assessed. Multi-objective optimisations are performed for various objectives to reveal the influence on the decision making. The calculated CO2 emissions, allow to assess the impact of the CO2 tax, considering not only the on-site emissions but taking into account the overall life cycle of the fuel supply, electricity generation and CO2 capture. The results show that the environomic optimal process design and competitiveness of CO2 capture highly depends on the considered environmental impact and on the introduction of a carbon tax.