Optimal operation of MEA-based post-combustion carbon capture for natural gas combined cycle power plants under different market conditions

Carbon capture for fossil fuel power generation attracts an increasing attention in order to address the significant challenge of global climate change. This study aims to explore the optimal operation under different market conditions for an assumed existing natural gas combined cycle (NGCC) power plant integrated with MEA-based post-combustion carbon capture (PCC) process. The steady state process models for NGCC power plant, PCC process and CO₂ compression train were developed in Aspen Plus® to give accurate prediction of process performance. Levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) is formulated as the objective function in optimization studies. Economic evaluation was carried out for the base case of the integrated system including CO₂ transport and storage (T&S). The optimal operations were investigated for the carbon capture level under different carbon price, fuel price and CO₂ T&S price. The study shows that carbon price needs to be over €100/ton CO₂ to justify the total cost of carbon capture from the NGCC power plant and needs to be €120/ton CO₂ to drive carbon capture level at 90%. Higher fuel price and CO₂ T&S price would cause a higher operating cost of running carbon capture process thus a higher carbon price is needed if targeted carbon capture level is to be maintained

Village Inequality in Western China

Increased regional inequality has been a major concern in many emerging economies like China, India, Vietnam and Thailand. However, even a large inequality is observed within the lagging regions. The objective of this paper is to look into what are the sources of within region inequality using the community surveys and a census type of households in Western China. This snapshot view of inequality within and between rural villages in western China is based on a census-type household survey in three administrative villages and a sampling survey of 286 natural villages in the poor province of Guizhou in 2004. In contrast to coastal regions, nonfarm income is distributed unevenly in this inland western region. This acco unts for the largest share of overall income inequality. But agriculture is still the rural peoples major source of livelihood in this particular location. On the expenditure side, health care is one of the most important sources of inequality. Because rural income is strongly related to human capital, the uneven access to health care will translate into a larger income gap in the long run. The analysis based on the natural village survey indicates that income varies widely across villages. Access to infrastructure and markets, education, and political participation explain most of this variation. These findings have important implications on the future development strategy in promoting lagging regions development and poverty reduction. While the overall economic development will be the main instrument to bring the majority poor out of poverty, a targeted approach has become increasingly crucial in helping the poor villages and households. It is critical to understand why these villages and households can not particulate in the growth process and how development programs and various transfer programs help them to overcome the constraints they face.Rural Development, Poverty, Inequality, Public investment, H54, O47, O53, R11, Community/Rural/Urban Development,

Village inequality in Western China: implications for development strategy in lagging regions

"Increased regional inequality has been a major concern in many emerging economies like China, India, Vietnam and Thailand. However, even a large inequality is observed within the lagging regions. The objective of this paper is to look into what are the sources of within region inequality using the community surveys and a census type of households in Western China. This snapshot view of inequality within and between rural villages in western China is based on a census-type household survey in three administrative villages and a sampling survey of 286 natural villages in the poor province of Guizhou in 2004. In contrast to coastal regions, nonfarm income is distributed unevenly in this inland western region. This accounts for the largest share of overall income inequality. But agriculture is still the rural people's major source of livelihood in this particular location. On the expenditure side, health care is one of the most important sources of inequality. Because rural income is strongly related to human capital, the uneven access to health care will translate into a larger income gap in the long run. The analysis based on the natural village survey indicates that income varies widely across villages. Access to infrastructure and markets, education, and political participation explain most of this variation. These findings have important implications on the future development strategy in promoting lagging regions development and poverty reduction. While the overall economic development will be the main instrument to bring the majority poor out of poverty, a targeted approach has become increasingly crucial in helping the poor villages and households. It is critical to understand why these villages and households can not participate in the growth process and how development programs and various transfer programs help them to overcome the constraints they face." Authors' AbstractRural development, Poverty reduction, Inequality, Public investment, China, Asia, Household surveys, Agriculture, Income Rural areas,

Resource abundance and regional development in China:

"Over the past several decades, China has made tremendous progress in market integration and infrastructure development. Demand for natural resources has increased from the booming coastal economies, causing the terms of trade to favor the resource sector, which is predominantly based in the interior regions of the country. However, the gap in economic development level between the coastal and inland regions has widened significantly. In this paper, using a panel data set at the provincial level, we show that Chinese provinces with abundant resources perform worse than their resource-poor counterparts in terms of per capita consumption growth. This trend that resource-poor areas are better off than resource-rich areas is particularly prominent in rural areas. Because of the institutional arrangements regarding property rights of natural resources, most gains from the resource boom have been captured either by the government or state owned enterprises. Thus, the windfall of natural resources has more to do with government consumption than household consumption. Moreover, in resource-rich areas, greater revenues accrued from natural resources bid up the price of non-tradable goods and hurt the competitiveness of the local economy." from Authors' AbstractRegional inequality, Resource curse, Dutch disease, Property rights, Rural-urban linkages,

Simulation-based techno-economic evaluation for optimal design of CO₂ transport pipeline network

For large volumes of carbon dioxide (CO₂) onshore and offshore transportation, pipeline is considered the preferred method. This paper presents a study of the pipeline network planned in the Humber region of the UK. Steady state process simulation models of the CO₂ transport pipeline network were developed using Aspen HYSYS®. The simulation models were integrated with Aspen Process Economic Analyser® (APEA). In this study, techno-economic evaluations for different options were conducted for the CO₂ compression train and the trunk pipelines respectively. The evaluation results were compared with other published cost models. Optimal options of compression train and trunk pipelines were applied to form an optimal case. The overall cost of CO₂ transport pipeline network was analyzed and compared between the base case and the optimal case. The results show the optimal case has an annual saving of 22.7 M€. For the optimal case, levelized energy and utilities cost is 7.62 €/t-CO₂, levelized capital cost of trunk pipeline is about 8.11 €/t-CO₂ and levelized capital cost of collecting system is 2.62 €/t- CO₂. The overall levelized cost of the optimal case was also compared to the result of another project to gain more insights for CO₂ pipeline network design

What Motivates People to Purchase NFTs? A Self-Discrepancy Perspective

Non-fungible token (NFT) sales change unpredictably and trend downward, which motivates us to explore the determinants of why people purchase NFTs. To answer this question, we develop a model based on the self-discrepancy theory and symbolic self-completion theory. The model proposes that the desire for self-completion is a key driver for such purchases, and functional properties of attractiveness, price utility, emotional properties of aesthetics and playfulness, and social properties of parasocial interaction and social relationship support are antecedents of the desire for self-completion. We also hypothesize that psychological ownership moderates the relationship between the desire for symbolic self-completion and purchase intention. The model will be validated using survey data collected from some popular NFT platforms. The results are expected to support our hypothesis, which contributes to the understanding of the purchase of NFTs by extending the theory of self-discrepancy and adds a new perspective to research on NFTs

Study on heat integration of supercritical coal-fired power plant with post-combustion CO₂ capture process through process simulation

Coal-fired power plant (CFPP) is one of the main sources of anthropogenic CO₂ emissions. Capturing CO₂ from CFPP by post-combustion process plays an important role to mitigate CO₂ emissions. However, a significant thermal efficiency drop was observed when integrating CFPP with post-combustion carbon capture (PCC) process due to the steam extraction for capture solvent regeneration. Thus research efforts are required to decrease this energy penalty. In this study, a steady state model for 600 MWe supercritical CFPP was developed as a reference case with a low heating value (LHV) based efficiency of 41.6%. A steady state model for MEA-based PCC process was also developed and scaled up to match the capacity of the CFPP. CO₂ compression process was simulated to give an accurate prediction of its electricity consumption and cooling requirement. Different integration cases were set up according to different positions of steam extraction from the CFPP. The results show that the efficiency penalty is 12.29% and 14.9% when steam was extracted at 3.64 bar and at 9.1 bar respectively. Obvious improvements were achieved by utilizing waste heat from CO₂ capture and compression process, taking part of low pressure cylinders out of service, and adding an auxiliary turbine to decompress the extracted steam. The efficiency penalty of the best case decreases to 9.75%. This study indicates that comprehensive heat integrations can significantly improve the overall energy efficiency when the CFPP is integrated with PCC and compression process