A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF REFINERY FUEL GAS OXY-FUEL COMBUSTION OPTIONS FOR CO_2 CAPTURE USING SIMULATED PROCESS DATA

摘要

The large scale industrial greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters, mainly coal-fired power plants, refineries and other chemical plants, maybe compelled in the near future to reduce their GHG emissions, especially carbon dioxide. This would be in accordance with the Kyoto protocol that is currently awaiting international ratification. Carbon dioxide, a major component of greenhouse gases, could be captured and isolated from different industrial flue gas streams by installing a CO_2 capture and treatment plant. Once CO_2 is captured, it can be stored permanently in suitable geological storage sites and/or used for coal-bed methane, enhanced oil recovery, or utilized for many other commercial applications. In this paper we study the application of oxy-combustion and CO_2 capture to two refinery fuel gases with given compositions. The simulation results are presented for four different combustion modes, including the air case as the baseline and three oxy-fuel combustion cases. This study shows that oxy-fuel combustion is a possible and viable approach for CO_2 capture from refinery fuel gases. A cost analysis is also performed to find out the estimated CO_2 capture and avoidance costs for each case. The CO_2 avoidance cost was found to be approximately 3 Cents to 4.5 Cents per kg of CO_2, excluding the transport and storage costs.