Performance assessment of carbonation process integrated with coal fired power plant to reduce CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions

This paper presents a novel approach to recover energy from mineral carbonation process, one of the CCS (carbon capture and storage) technologies, to reduce its additional energy demand and reports the feasibility of integrating a carbonation process with an existing power plant for reducing CO2 (carbon dioxide) emission. A thermodynamic mass and energy flow model of the carbonation process is developed using Matlab/Simulink software for a range of carbonation temperatures using two naturally available feedstocks, namely serpentine and olivine. The CO2 emissions are reduced if a carbonation system is implemented in the power plant, though the power generation efficiency and net power output are reduced too due to the large amount of extra energy required for the grinding of feedstock and the compression of CO2. The existing power plant efficiency was found to be 36.1%. If a carbonation system is incorporated, the plant efficiency reduces to 22% and 24% using serpentine and olivine feedstocks respectively. However, a significant amount of heat energy can be recovered from exothermic reaction of carbonation and carbonated products. The power plant efficiency can be increased to 35% and 34% again, respectively, when energy from carbonation reaction and carbonated products can be recovered appropriately.