Techno-economic analysis of co-combustion of Indian coals with municipal solid waste in subcritical and supercritical based steam turbine power generating carbon-negative systems

Highlights: • Co-combustion of MSW with Indian coals is performed for economic fuel utilization. • Energy and economic analyses are performed for sub and supercritical power plants. • MSW blending decreased specific CO₂ emissions by 16–44 kg/MWh without CO₂ capture. • Equal proportion of MSW and coal resulted in 60–67 $/MWh of electricity. • Post carbon capture raised 50% cost of electricity in supercritical power plants. Incineration of municipal solid waste (MSW) can generate thermal energy for electricity generation and reduces its accumulation in the environment. MSW has low calorific value and its utilization would lead to low thermal efficiency in power plants due to higher auxiliary power consumption. Alternatively, this problem can be overcome by co-utilizing MSW with coal in thermal power plants. The capture of the generated CO₂ from MSW can lead to carbon-negative energy production. Hence to evaluate its feasibility, energy and techno-economic analysis of subcritical and supercritical based steam turbines using MSW and its co-utilization with Indian high ash and low ash coals are performed using Aspen plus software (v 8.8). The effect of integrating post combustion carbon capture on the net thermal efficiency of power plants and its subsequent impact on levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) are analysed. The feedstock with an equal proportion of coal and MSW had shown a reasonable LCOE in the range of 60–67 $/MWh without carbon capture. The results had shown that the addition of 25% MSW to low ash coal could give a similar plant thermal efficiency and LCOE to that of high ash coal under subcritical conditions without carbon capture.