In this paper, the exergoeconomic analysis was conducted to an existing ultra-supercritical coal-fired power plant in China to understand the cost-formation process, to evaluate the economic performance of each component and to find possible solutions for more cost-effective designs. The total revenue requirement (TRR) and the specific exergy costing (SPECO) methods were applied for economic analysis and exergy costing, respectively. Quantitative balances of exergy and exergetic costs as well as necessary auxiliary equations for both individual component and the overall system were established. The results show that the exergoeconomic factors of the furnace and heat exchangers at low temperature levels, including air preheater and low-pressure feedwater preheaters, are rather small; while those of other components are relatively large. Moving more heat absorption into furnace to use the effective radiation heat transfer, increasing the air preheating temperature and adding more low pressure feedwater preheaters can be promising solutions for future design.

The study focused on the structural sensitivity of lignin during the phosphoric acid–acetone pretreatment process and the resulting hydrolysis and phosphorylation reaction mechanisms using density functional theory calculations. The chemical stabilities of the seven most common linkages (β-O-4, β-β, 4-O-5, β-1, 5-5, α-O-4, and β-5) of lignin in H₃PO₄, CH₃COCH₃, and H₂O solutions were detected, which shows that α-O-4 linkage and β-O-4 linkage tend to break during the phosphoric acid–acetone pretreatment process. Then α-O-4 phosphorylation and β-O-4 phosphorylation follow a two-step reaction mechanism in the acid treatment step, respectively. However, since phosphorylation of α-O-4 is more energetically accessible than phosphorylation of β-O-4 in phosphoric acid, the phosphorylation of α-O-4 could be controllably realized under certain operational conditions, which could tune the electron and hole transfer on the right side of β-O-4 in the H₂PO₄⁻ functionalized lignin. The results provide a fundamental understanding for process-controlled modification of lignin and the potential novel applications in lignin-based imprinted polymers, sensors, and molecular devices.