CO2 capture and storage: opportunity for sustainable electricity generation

More than 90% of generated electricity in Iran is based on fossil fuels power plants. Worldwide, electricity generation is responsible for 54% of GHG emissions. Thus, it is vital to try to reduce CO2 emission in thermal power plants.CO2 capture and storage (CCS) is one of the candidate technologies to reduce CO2 emission in different industries. Possibletechniques for CO2 capture from thermal power plants can be categorised as: • CO2 capture after combustion (postcombustion); • CO2 capture after concentration in the flue gas (oxyfuel power plants); and • CO2 capture before combustion (precombustion). In this paper, it was shown that in the powergeneration sector very low CO2 emission is possible through CO2 capture but the energy and economic penalizations could be substantial. The analyses showed that for different technologies efficiency penalty could be as high as 25% and cost of electricity might increase by more than 65%. Two scenarios for Iranian electricitygeneration sector were investigated in this paper: installing CCS on the existing power plants with current technologies and replacing existing power plants by natural gas combined cycle plants equipped with CO2capture system. The results revealed that the GHG intensity can be reduced from 610 to 79 in first scenario and to 54 gCO2eq/kWh insecond scenario.

Keywords:

CO2 capture and storage , Greenhouse Gas emissions , GHG , Iran’s electricity generationsector