1. Introduction
Natural gas-fired power plants currently generate about 20% of
the global electricity, and the share of electricity production from
natural gas (NG) is expected to increase in coming years owing to
the high plant efficiency (relative to pulverised coal plants), low investment cost, high reliability and flexibility (IEAGHG, 2012).
Although NG-fired power plants are less emission intensive than
coal-fired power plants, they are not a CO2-free generation option.
Emissionreductionfromtheseplantsmay also benecessary tomeet
more stringent emission targets in the future.
In order to mitigate CO2 emissions from existing NG-fired
plants, one possible near-term option is to co-utilize carbon neutral
biomass with NG either through supplementary firing or co-firing.
In the case of supplementaryfiring, NG is used to provide the energy
for the gas turbine topping cycle, while biomass is used as a supplementary
fuel to improve the performance of the bottoming cycle.