Coal is an abundant, widespread, cheap energy source and contributes to 39% of the world's electric power generation. Coal releases large amounts of carbon dioxide (CO_2), which is believed to play a major role in global warming and climate change. To de-carbonize power generation, three distinct carbon capture technologies are in varying stages of development. These include pre-combustion carbon capture through the use of integrated coal gasification combined cycle (IGCC), post-combustion carbon capture from a pulverized-coal (PC)-fired power plant flue gas using monoethanolamine (MEA) or ammonia (NH_3), and oxy-combustion technology. In the latter technology, oxygen is first separated from nitrogen in an air separator unit and used for combustion of coal in a conventional PC boiler. With oxy-combustion technology, the resulting flue gas is predominantly CO_2, which makes CO_2 capture easier than in the PC-MEA case.This paper discusses the development status as well as the advantages, limitations, performance and economics of each technology in regard to the capture and non-capture cases.
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