Coursework Outline

Drax Power Station produces $3,900M{W}_e$ of net electrical power output, which is about $6\%$ of the national power demand in the UK$.$ Following the discovery of vast reserves of coal in the Selby Coalfield in $1967,$ the plant was designed to produce power from burning coal and was finally comissioned in $1974.$ Over the decades, however, with a growing awareness of climate change caused by carbon dioxide emissions from burning coal and the consequent government policies, Drax have lauched an ambitious programme te become carbon neutral or even carbon negative by the use of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage $($BECCS$).$ In the first phase of this project, all the six boilers, originally designed to burn coal, are being switched to biomass, thus making the process $($nearly$)$ carbon neutral. In the second phase, a Carbon Capture and Storage system needs to be installed in order to make the process carbon negative and help compensate for other net positive $C{O}_2$ emitters in the country. The biomass fuel used at Drax consists of wood pellets which have a calorific value of $17\mathrm{.}5M\frac{J}{k}g$ and contain $54\%$ carbon by weight. The net thermal efficiency of the plant is $45\%.$

You are the sustainability manager of Drax power station. Your tasks are as follows:

Determine the annual fuel demand of the plant. You may assume that the plant operates at $90\%$ of its capacity on average.

Determine the current $C{O}_2$ emissions $($Million tons per year$)$ from the plant before any CCS is implemented.