Techno-economic prospects for CO₂ capture from a Solid Oxide Fuel Cell-Combined Heat and Power plant. Preliminary results

Abstract

Potentially low-cost CO₂ capture may facilitate pre-commercial solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) technology entering the energy market. The aim of this study was to compare and evaluate the techno-economic performance of CO₂ capture from industrial SOFC-Combined Heat and Power plant (CHP). CO₂ is captured by using oxyfuel afterburner and conventional air separation technologies. The results were compared to both SOFC-CHP plants without CO₂ capture and conventional gas engines CHP without CO₂ capture. The system modeling was performed using Cycle Tempo software. Our results show that while SOFC-CHP without CO₂ capture requires a low SOFC stack production cost of about 310$ /kW to compete with conventional GE-CHP, SOFC-CHP with CO₂ capture using large scale air separation unit can compete with GE-CHP at higher stack production costs when the CO₂ price is above 37 $ /t CO₂. CO₂ avoidance cost of 50 $ /t CO₂ can be achieved at a stack production cost of 410 $ /kWe. The results indicate that CO₂ capture, even with commercially available technologies, can economically facilitate SOFC entering the energy market in a carbon-constrained society.