Techno-economic assessment of flexible combined heat and power plant with Carbon Capture and Storage

Abstract

As Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is now regarded as on its way to become a mature technology to reduce dramatically CO2 emissions from conventional generation, its economic ineffectiveness may still be preventing its large-scale adoption. In this respect, new strategies for flexible operation of Carbon Capture and Storage systems could bring substantial benefits allowing achieving both ambitious CO2 reductions and higher profits. In addition, further economic and environmental benefits could be achieved by adopting high efficiency Combined Heat and Power (CHP) plants. On these premises, this paper investigates the benefits of coupling a flexible CCS system and a flexible CHP plant, with the aim of deploying the flexibility available in both CCS and CHP to consume/produce more or less electricity in response to market conditions. A mathematical model is developed to maximise profit responding to volatile market prices by optimally switching the CCS and CHP plants between different operating modes. The effectiveness and the usefulness of the proposed model are demonstrated on a realistic case study with extensive sensitivity analyses.