Life Cycle Assessment of Coal-fired Power Production

Abstract

Prepared under Task No. BP911030 Excluding the consumption of fossil fuels by the power plant, the external energy efficiency and external energy ratio indicate that upstream processes are large consumers of energy. In fact, two operations, those related to flue gas clean-up and coal transportation, account for between 3.8% and 4.2% of the total system energy consumption, and between 67.4% and 70.5% of the non-coal energy. Processes involved in the gas clean-up operations include the production, transport, and use of limestone and lime in the Average and NSPS systems, and the production, distribution, and combustion of natural gas in the LEBS system. These operations consume between 35.3% and 38.5% of the non-coal energy, and between 2.0% and 2.4% of the total energy of the systems. Transportation of the coal uses similar amounts: between 30.1% and 32.2% of non-coal, and 1.8% of total system energy. As expected, the amount of resources consumed, emissions produced, and energy used, are small for the mine mouth transportation case. It was found that the transportation distance has a significant effect on the oil consumption, a few of the systems emissions, and the energy consumption, whereas the mode of transportation has virtually no effect on the results. Although energy consumption is significant, transportation required fewer resources and had lower air, water, and solid waste emissions than either the mining or electricity generation subsystems. Appendices Appendix A: Graphical Representation of the LCA System in TEAM ® Appendix B: Additional Results Tables Appendix C: Additional Figures Units of Measure Metric units of measure are used in this report. Therefore, material consumption is reported in units based on the gram (e.g., kilogram or megagram), energy consumption based on the joule (e.g., kilojoule or megajoule), and distance based on the meter (e.g., kilometer). When it can contribute to the understanding of the analysis, the English system equivalent is stated in parenthesis. The metric units used for each parameter are given below, with the corresponding conversion to English units. Mass: kilogram (kg) = 2.205 pounds megagram (Mg) = metric tonne (T) = 1 x 10 g = 1.102 ton (t) 6 Distance: kilometer (km) = 0.62 mile = 3,281 feet Area: hectare (ha) = 10,000 m = 2.47 acres 2 Volume: cubic meter (m) = 264.17 gallons 3 Pressure: kilopascals (kPa) = 0.145 pounds per square inch Energy: gigajoule (GJ) = 0.9488 MMBtu (million Btu) kilowatt-hour (kWh) = 3,414.7 Btu gigawatt-hour (GWh) = 3.4 x 10 Btu 9

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