Highly Paramaterized openLCA Model of a Novel Carbon-Negative BECCS Power Plant

Biomass co-firing with carbon capture and storage is a promising avenue for producing carbon negative power. This work shows the final iteration of a midpoint attributional lifecycle assessment (LCA) on the front-end engineering design (FEED) stage of a plant which combusts forest residue biomass, waste coal product, and virgin coal to produce power. The LCA was performed in accordance with the 21st century power plant (21CPP) initiative and extends upon work performed by (Bennett et al. 2023), wherein the global warming potential of an initial plant design was assessed during a pre-FEED study. LCA was integrated into plant design from an early stage to identify environmental hot-spots, inform design decisions, and identify the fraction of biomass which must be fired to achieve a carbon negative footprint. The final plant design uses a novel combination of pressurized fluidized bed combustors (PFBCs) and an atmospheric fluidized bed biomass boiler to achieve targeted efficiency and electricity generation goals. The proposed plant generates -70 to -100 gCO2eq/kWh produced (depending on the biomass process unit used), when 20% forest residue biomass is fired on an energy basis, and virgin coal is mixed with waste coal on a 50% mass basis.