Oxygen production routes assessment for oxy-fuel combustion

Oxyfuel combustion is a promising alternative to decarbonize the power sector. However, the main barrier to commercial deployment of the technology is the high energy consumption associated with oxygen production (∼200–300 kWh per ton of O2), which penalizes the thermal-to-electric efficiency of 8.5–12% compared to traditional air combustion plants. Typically, oxygen is obtained from a cryogenic air separation process. However, other technologies have been gaining momentum in recent years, such as membrane technologies, chemical looping air separation, and renewable-driven electrolysis. The present work evaluates all these options for O2 production to retrofit a 550 MWe coal-fired power plant with oxyfuel combustion. A techno-economic assessment is carried out to estimate the energy penalty, the O2 production cost (€/ton) and the Levelized Cost of Electricity. The best results are obtained by combining oxygen transport membranes and electrolysis since the energy consumption has been reduced to 98.56 kWh/ton of O2, decreasing by 59.31% the cryogenic distillation energy consumption (242.24 kWh/ton O2), reducing the overall energy penalty compared to cryogenic air separation from 8.88% points to 7.56%points. The oxygen transport membrane presents the lowest cost of electricity in retrofitting cases, 51.48 $/MWh, while cryogenic distillation estimated cost is 52.7 $/MWh. Their costs of avoided CO2 are 31.79 $/ton CO2 and 34.15 $/ton CO2 respectively.