Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Energy Conversion and Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/enconman 4-E analyses of chemical looping combustion based subcritical, supercritical and ultra-supercritical coal-fired power plants Gajanan Dattarao Surywanshi, B. Basant Kumar Pillai, Venkata Suresh Patnaikuni ⁎ , Ramsagar Vooradi, Sarath Babu Anne Department of Chemical Engineering, National Institute of Technology Warangal, Warangal 506004, India ARTICLEINFO Keywords: Chemical looping combustion Exergy analysis Economic analysis 4-E analyses Ultra-supercritical power plant High-ash coal ABSTRACT Carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere are accelerated due to increased demand for energy. Coal-fired power plants are still the major sources of power generation in many countries and have become the major sources of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. Chemical looping combustion is one of the most promising “next generation” carbon dioxide capture technologies. The present work investigates steady-state simulations of three chemical looping combustion based power plants: (i) subcritical, (ii) supercritical and (iii) ultra-super- critical using high-ash coal. The overall performances of these chemical looping combustion based plants are evaluated in terms of 4-E (energy, exergy, ecological and economic) analyses. For power production with complete carbon dioxide capture, the present study demonstrates a net energy efficiency penalty of 0.92%, 1.49% and 3.86% for chemical looping combustion based subcritical, supercritical and ultra-supercritical coal- fired power plants, respectively, when compared with the corresponding conventional plants. The 4-E analyses revealed that the chemical looping combustion based supercritical and ultra-supercritical power plants are energetically, exergetically, environmentally, and economically favoured plants for power generation compared to the other variants. 1. Introduction Global warming by greenhouse gases (GHG) has become a major concern worldwide due to its adverse effect on climate change. With the growing energy demand, fossil fuel consumption has increased leading to enormous carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions. Countries such as China, United States of America (USA) and the European Union are the leading CO 2 emitters in the world, while the developing countries like India also contribute to a significant amount of global CO 2 emissions. Fig. 1 shows the share of global CO 2 emissions by different countries from fossil fuels during the year 2010 to 2017 [1]. India ranks 4th after China, United States and the European Union with 6.62% share of global CO 2 emissions during the year 2017. In the recent years, notable decrease in global share of CO 2 emissions can be observed in case of United States and European Union due to good CO 2 management. In case of China, Russia and Japan, the share of emissions is stable, whereas it is on the increase for India due to increased power pro- duction. For countries like India, the problem of CO 2 emission is more critical as 57.9% of electricity is generated from coal [2]. India has vast coal resources, amounting to 8.3% of global reserves [3], and about three fourths of electricity was produced from coal for the year 2016–17 [2]. To meet the global commitments on emissions, India is planning for a judicial mix of coal, renewables and nuclear. The low calorific value (or high-ash content) in Indian coal reduces the net ef- ficiency of the power plant as compared to low ash content (or high calorific value) coals [4]. One way of increasing net plant efficiency is by adapting advanced power plant technologies such as – supercritical (SupC) and ultra-supercritical (Ultra-SupC) plants. Further, the in- tegration of chemical looping combustion (CLC) technology with these advanced plants can reduce the energy penalty associated with carbon dioxide capture. At present, three conventional CO 2 capture technologies (post- combustion, pre-combustion and oxy-combustion) are being used. Though these technologies result in attractive CO 2 reduction, they are associated with huge energy penalty. The post-combustion capture for the conventional coal-based power plant results in around 7–10% en- ergy penalty for 85% CO 2 capture efficiency [5]. The pre-combustion and oxy-combustion CO 2 capture for the conventional integrated gasi- fication combined cycle (IGCC) plant results in around 7% and 9% energy penalty for the CO 2 capture efficiency of 94.80% and 100%, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enconman.2019.112050 Received 13 May 2019; Received in revised form 15 August 2019; Accepted 8 September 2019 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: pvsuresh@nitw.ac.in (V.S. Patnaikuni). Energy Conversion and Management 200 (2019) 112050 0196-8904/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T