Abstracts Economics

Economic Evaluation of Capturing CO2 From Natural Gas Power Plant and Injecting CO2 for Enhanced Oil Recovery as an Integrated System

by Nima Allahyari

CO2 is said to be one of the most important greenhouse gas that causes global warming. The most common sources of CO2 emission into the atmosphere are fossil fueled power plants. With the increasing demand of energy in the world, more power plants needs to be built and consequently more CO2 is released to the atmosphere. On the other hand, there is possibility of establishing tax for carbon emission in different countries. One of the popular methods for decreasing the emission of CO2 is using MEA as a chemical solution to capture it and inject it to an oil reservoir for enhanced oil recovery. In this research a comprehensive economic evaluation has been done for capturing CO2 from a natural gas combine cycle power plant with the nominal capacity of 500 MW and compressing it for enhanced oil recovery as an integrated system. The power plant, CO2 capture plant, and CO2 compression plant were simulated using Aspen Hysys. The information from the simulations, such as flow rates, temperatures and pressures, was used to determine the size of major equipment. These sizes, along with the material of construction and type of equipment, were used to estimate the cost of the equipment. A chemical engineering cost index was applied to convert all equipment costs to 2012 dollars. Next, to calculate the total capital cost of the project, the fraction of purchased equipment cost method (Peters et al., 2003) was used. The profitability of the project has been calculated as return on investment, payback period, net return, net present worth, and discounted cash flow rate of return. Parameters such as the price of natural gas, oil, electricity, and the oil production to CO2 injection ratio of the reservoir affect the profitability of the project significantly. Therefore, a sensitivity analysis was done on these parameters to find out that how safe an investment in this project is regarding the current situation of the market. Based on the technical engineering analysis, and a detailed economic study, the results indicate that the project is feasible. This is subject to changes in the market prices of natural gas, oil, and electricity, as well as the validity of the economic and technical assumptions.