Industrial Decarbonization and refining with Green Hydrogen to Produce SNG: Case Study of a Power Plant located in Gorubanda, Niamey, Niger

Abstract

Global warming and climate change are two of today's most serious environmental issues, with greenhouse gas emissions being the primary cause. As a result of the increased concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, more reflected sunlight was captured, producing serious acute and chronic environmental problems. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached 421 ppm in 2022, up from 280 in the 1800s, due to rising carbon dioxide emissions from the Industrial Revolution. Carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere can be reduced by employing low-carbon energy technologies, such as carbon capture storage, and utilization technologies. It has been reported that applying carbon capture, utilization, and storage can capture up to 95% of the carbon dioxide emitted in running power plants (Mukherjee et al., 2019). Furthermore, renewable energy sources are making their way into the energy system. However, since renewable energy sources are intermittent, storage is a major issue. To meet energy demand while mitigating climate change, renewable energy technologies must be combined with carbon capture and utilization to produce synthetic natural gas. In this thesis, an economic analysis of a carbon capture and methanation project was performed. The project aims to implement this carbon capture and methanation technology in a power plant in Gorubanda/Niamey. A life cycle analysis was also performed to evaluate the project's environmental implications using OpenLCA software. Furthermore, carbon capture via adsorption employing Aspen Adsorption software was proposed for reducing both, the cost of investment and the environmental impacts of the project. The economic analysis results showed that the project is economically feasible with a return on investment of 13%, a payback period of 9.4 years, and a synthetic natural gas cost of 0.32 €/MWh. The life cycle analysis findings indicated that the marine aquatic ecosystem is the most affected. Further findings showed that the adsorption process has the potential to replace the considered absorption process in economic analysis. Overall, the study's findings provide a substantial contribution to the field of sustainable energy and carbon emissions reduction.