GreenDEALCO2 - Green Deployment of E-fuels And Liquids based on CO2 for closed and end-of-life coal-related assets
- Contact person: Nouman Akram
- Project duration: 01.08.2021 – 31.07.2024
The European Green Deal aims to achieve emission targets for the 2 °C scenario set in the Paris Climate Agreement which necessitates new strategies and climate plans. Among them, rapid coal phase-out is considered essential for decarbonising the power and energy sector. This rapid coal phase-out strategy puts the European coal-fired plants under pressure and not only produces stranded assets but also necessitates alternative energy supply.
The GreenDEALCO2 project aims to facilitate the rapid phasing out of coal by promoting cost-efficient integration of power-to-fuel technologies in end-of-life and closed power plants. The project proposes the re-orienting and re-purposing of end-of-life and closed coal power plants by retrofitting to alternative energy commodities and exploiting the stranded assets to be ultimately integrated with an E-fuel production plant. The project explores cost-effective solutions for the coal industry in which the power to fuel technology brings about a synergy between the transport, industry and power sectors.
The project considers novel scenarios for retrofitting end-of-life coal power plants and proposes to employ the stranded assets of the closed plants to be re-used by synergy with neighbouring industries and waste-to-energy plants. The production of sustainable E-fuels at coal-related assets is realized through combination of green H2 via Electrolysis and the following CO2 streams:
- CO2 from an end-of-life coal power plant that will be retrofitted to biomass such as high-quality biomass, residual biomass and waste-derived fuels or gaseous fuel of SNG and H2
- CO2 from nearby waste-to-energy plants with partly biogenic waste and
- CO2 from a nearby industrial source
The site of the closed or retrofitted coal power plant will be integrated with a power-to-fuel production plant. For this purpose, the boundary conditions of actual power plants from the utility operators of the consortium, located in Greece, Germany and Austria will be considered, so the case studies investigated will have realistic deployment prospects. Furthermore, the project aims to promote investments into E-fuels by performing sustainability analysis and a pilot certification on the whole supply chain of E-fuel production in retrofitted and closed coal power plants. The project outcome is expected to support the coal and energy sectors by introducing new business plans for the coal industry. It opens new prospects for coal regions in transition to contribute to climate-neutral energy production.
EVT is leading the Work Package 3 of the project GreenDEALCO2 and is responsible for optimal design and integration of power-to-fuel processes in retrofitted end-of-life and closed coal plants. Within the scope of the tasks, separate use cases for retrofitted end-of-life and closed coal plants are defined and will be evaluated for optimal design and integration of different fuel production routs such as Fischer-Tropsch (FT) rout and methanol (MeOH) rout. EVT will also develop optimised operation strategies for power-to-fuel processes in retrofitted and closed coal plants, using cost minimization as target function considering time-resolved electricity market prices, various plant design, full load operational hours and waste heat integration. For this purpose, mixed integer linear programming and simplified (surrogate) models of the various process units will be used, which will allow for reasonable calculation times. For the development of the surrogate-models being used, will aim to apply physical- and data-driven approaches. At the end, techno-economic calculations will be performed to develop a guideline on cost and energy-efficient power-to-fuel integration in coal-related assets.
Project partner (incl. logo): Public Power Cooperation S.A. (PPC), RWE Power AG, VERBUND Thermal Power GmbH&CoKG (VTP), Mitsubishi Power Europe (Mitsubishi Power), Motor Oil Hellas, Meo Carbon Solutions GmbH (MCS), National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), University of Stuttgart (USTUTT), VGB
