TITLE:
Environmental Impact Assessment of GHG Emissions Generated by Coal Life Cycle and Solutions for Reducing CO2
AUTHORS:
Cristian Dincă, Călin-Cristian Cormoş, Horia Necula
KEYWORDS:
CO2 Capture; Coal; LCA; Amines
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Environmental Protection,
Vol.4 No.8B,
August
16,
2013
ABSTRACT: The objective of this paper consists of evaluating the coal life cycle and proposing
technical solutions for reducing GHG emissions. After applying the life cycle assessment on the coal life
cycle, it was noticed that the power engineering stage has
a bigger environmental impact on different indicator impacts. In order to reduce the GHG emissions
the CO2 chemical absorption process was integrated in the power
plant based on the circulating fluidized bed combustion technology. Two cases
were analyzed: super-critical and ultra-supra-critical parameters. For each
case the environmental indicators (global warming potential, abiotic depletion
potential, human toxicity potential, photochemical potential, acidification
potential, eutrophisation potential) were evaluated in order to estimate the
environmental effects on the coal life cycle with CO2 capture
process. After the integration of the CO2 capture post-combustion
process into the power plant, the GHG emissions decreased from 450,760 CO2 equiv. tons to 75,937 CO2 equiv. tons for super-critical
parameters and from 438122 CO2 equiv. tons to 73245 CO2 equiv. tons for ultra-supra-critical parameters respectively. In order to
increase the absorption capacity of the MEA solvent the SO2 emissions were reduced from flue gases and consequently the acidification
potential was reduced too in both cases. On the contrary, the amount of fuel
increased in order to maintain the functional unit as a result of the
efficiency penalty of the CO2 capture integration in the power plant.