MESMERISE PROJECT-Multi-Scale Energy Systems Modelling Encompassing Renewable Intermittent and Carbon Capture and Storage

MESMERISE PROJECT-Multi-Scale Energy Systems Modelling Encompassing Renewable Intermittent and Carbon Capture and Storage

Dr Evgenia Mechleri

Supervisor: Dr Niall Mac Dowell

Funding: EP/M001369/1

The MESMERISE project is a four year project started in October 2014, funded by the EPSRC, which will identify the flexibility bottlenecks in the Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) chain and also promising options for the development of resilient CCS systems.

The aim of this project is to examine the whole systems CCS chain, from power generation, capture of CO₂, transport and storage and internally calculate CCS plant load factors and electricity wholesale prices, thereby enabling a rigorous, technologically- and temporally-explicit, whole systems analysis. Feedback from CO₂ storage operations will exert an as-yet unknown impact on the feasible operating space of the decarbonised power plant. We will explicitly quantify the interactions between the above- and below-ground links in the CCS chain as illustrated in Figure 1.

(Figure 1. The CCS network integrated with intermittent sources of renewable energy)

On a larger scale, the inter-operation of sample UK-specific CCS networks with intermittent renewable energy generation will be examined from an internally consistent whole-systems perspective. The linking of CCS and renewable energy generation system models will allow us to examine the opportunities and impacts associated with the co-deployment of renewable energy and CCS in the UK. This will feed into a wider policy analysis that will examine the dynamics of changing system infrastructure at intermediate time periods between now and 2050.

So far, the focus has been on the evaluation and development of the different technologies for capture, i.e: post-combustion, pre-combustion, oxy-combustion. Moreover we have worked on the flexibility analysis and development of decentralised and centralised advanced model predictive control configurations for integrated coal and natural gas power plants with post-combustion. Also, we have looked on CO₂ utilisation to produce different products, such as urea, formic acid, methanol and minerals. The next steps will focus on the economic model predictive control formulation and on developing meta-models for the different processes and construct step by step the CCS chain for further analysis and integration with the renewable systems.