Operational-level synergistic strategy for enhancing carbon benefits in coal-fired power plants

• Developing an operational-level synergistic strategy for total carbon emission control. • Achieving 11,306.71 t/yr additional carbon reduction via the synergistic strategy. • Quantifying a 0.87% decrease in carbon emission factor through the synergistic strategy. • Revealing that carbon mitigation benefits are highly sensitive to carbon pricing. • Demonstrating a 1.28% decline in carbon emission factor under a high carbon price scenario. Considering the impact of total carbon emission management policy in China, the coal-fired power plants (CFPP) must not only promote the large-scale deployment of zero-carbon/negative-carbon technologies in the long term, but also achieve staged carbon reduction targets in the short term through the optimization of operational-level emission reduction strategy. Since CCUS implementation in Chinese CFPP remains constrained by various factors, this study has developed an hourly plant-level optimization strategy that integrates load dispatching with dynamic coal blending as an operational-level synergistic strategy. The study examines the carbon benefit of the load dispatching strategy for the total carbon emission management system in CFPP, and compares it with the benefit of the operational-level synergistic strategy. The results indicate that the load dispatching optimization strategy can significantly reduce the carbon emissions of the unit. Compared with the traditional load distribution method, it can achieve a maximum net reduction of 5.8 tons of CO 2 /h. For each 1% increase in the load dispatched to high-efficiency units, the total carbon emissions of the plant can be reduced by 0.23%. Operational-Level synergistic strategy can stimulate the intrinsic emission reduction potential of CFPP. For the two 300 MW coal-fired units considered in this study, compared with the individual load dispatching optimization strategy, the operational-level synergistic strategy can achieve a net CO 2 reduction of 11306.71 tons per year, and the average carbon emission factor (tCO 2 /MWh) of CFPP under the influence of the operational-level synergistic strategy has decreased by 0.87%. In addition, the carbon benefits of the operational-level synergistic strategy exhibit a high degree of sensitivity to fluctuations in carbon prices. With the increasing carbon price, the total carbon emissions and carbon emission factor of CFPP under the high carbon price scenario decrease by an average of 1.28% compared to the low carbon price scenario. The operational-level synergistic strategy can be widely applied to units with large load fluctuation ranges, such as peak load power generator sets. During the transition period of the industry towards long-term deep decarbonization, it provides an immediate and feasible emission reduction path for CFPP.