Redesign, Optimization, and Economic Evaluation of a Natural Gas Combined Cycle with the Best Integrated Technology CO2 Capture

The Best Integrated Technology (BIT) concept for post-combustion CO2 capture was evaluated for a 400 MW natural gas combined cycle power plant. The power plant was redesigned and optimized to include exhaust gas recirculation, an amine reboiler integrated into the heat recovery steam generator, and a low-cost amine unit capturing 90% of the CO2 through absorption into a 30-wt% monoethanolamine solution. A detailed performance evaluation of the CO2-lean power plant as well as a cost estimation of the power island and CO2 compression sections of the plant was carried out in order to evaluate the performance penalty of CO2 capture, the additional costs associated with this technology, and the advantages relative to state-ofthe-art solutions retrofitting the power plant with a conventional CO2 capture unit.