Open Access: Retrofitting an Australian Brown Coal Power Station with Post-Combustion Capture

This is an open-access pre-feasibility study by Bechtel Infrastructure for CO2CRC examining capture retrofit to an existing power plant in the Latrobe Valley, Victoria, Australia.  The plant is burning a very low-sulphur fuel and does not include flue gas desulphurisation (FGD) facilities; sulphur levels in the flue gas going to the capture plant were planned to be accommodated by aggressive solvent reclaiming.  Since the plant was designed without any planning for CCS retrofit, ‘conventional’ steam extraction from the intermediate/low pressure crossover pipes on the steam turbine proved to be a difficult challenge for the study team experts.  Fortunately, the existing steam circuit also included a large bypass line for start-up purposes and this could be used, with an additional expansion turbine, to give a thermodynamically-efficient solution.

Full conceptual study available here.