Managing capture technology uncertainty in capture-ready gas power plants

Decarbonisation of UK electricity generation is unlikely to be achieved without carbon dioxide capture and geological storage for natural gas fired power plants. In a period when fast learning curves for carbon dioxide capture technologies can be expected, it is important that gas plants built as capture ready are able to incorporate technology developments that occur during the period of time when the plant operates without capture. This paper focuses on carbon dioxide capture from combined cycle gas turbine plants and extends concepts previously proposed by the authors for capture-ready designs to include novel options capable of covering a wide range of solvent properties. These options avoid locking in power plants to a specific solvent technology at the time of commissioning and effectively act as a hedge against risk associated with technology obsolescence at the time of retrofitting. They follow the general principles of capture-ready design of low additional capital cost, no upfront performance penalty, good performance with capture and the ability to operate with the capture unit bypassed. Particularly in countries not yet committed to carbon dioxide capture and geological storage, power plant developers may want to keep their retrofit options open by building plants capable of fitting radically different solvents from current state-of-the-art amines.