Energy, exergy and economic analyses of a novel biomass fueled power plant with carbon capture and sequestration.

The biomass based power plants, especially those with the carbon capture unit, usually suffer the issue of low electric efficiency, which is adverse to their commercial application. As one approach to solving this issue, a novel biomass fueled power plant with carbon capture and sequestration (BFP-CCS) is proposed in this work. The BFP-CCS subunit models are first validated before the integrated model of BFP-CCS is built. Then, the BFP-CCS characteristics are analyzed in terms of energy, exergy and economics, and the optimum operation condition of BFP-CCS is determined. Based on this research, it is found that BFP-CCS performs best at the HO/MnO mass ratio of 1.6, the HO/O molar ratio of 2.8, the O/biomass mass ratio of 0.22 and the fuel utilization factor of 0.65. The corresponding net efficiency, the life cycle CO emission and the levelized cost of electricity of BFP-CCS are 51.7%, $0.0501 /kWh and -0.591 kg/kWh, respectively. The biggest contributors of the energy and exergy losses are the steam turbine and the solid oxide fuel cell in BFP-CCS, respectively. The major implication of this study is that an efficient and economical BFP-CCS system is put forward, which is promising for CO removal during power generation.