The aim of this project has been to prepare for pre-commercial demonstration of Chemical Looping Combustion (CLC) of solid waste-derived fuels. This is an innovative process for generation of power and heat from waste (waste-to-energy, WtE) providing a concentrated stream of CO2 that is ready for transport and storage or utilization. NORSUS’ work has been to give input to the innovation process throughout the project and to determine the environmental impact of the CLC waste-to-energy business cases. LCA’s have been performed for two CCS and two CCU cases, in addition to several preliminary cases at an earlier stage.
For CCS systems and climate change, the following conclusions can be drawn:
- Burdens from ship/pipeline transport of CO2 and storage are of minor importance.
- Land based transport of CO2 can affect the results.
For CCU systems, the use of energy for producing H2 for fuel/chemical production plays an important role. The study shows that:
- In today’s energy market, storage of the captured CO2 and production of conventional fuel/chemicals leads to lower climate burdens than CCU-produced fuel/chemicals.
- As long as renewable electricity can substitute fossil electricity elsewhere in the grid, the climate performance is better than when using renewable electricity for producing CCU fuels/chemicals.
