CO2 capture from oxy-fuel combustion power plants

Abstract: To mitigate the global greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions, carbon dioxide (CO2) capture and storage (CCS) has the potential to play a significant role for reaching mitigation target. Oxy-fuel combustion is a promising technology for CO2 capture in power plants. Advantages compared to CCS with the conventional combustion technology are: high combustion efficiency, flue gas volume reduction, low fuel consumption, near zero CO2 emission, and less nitrogen oxides (NOx) formation can be reached simultaneously by using the oxy-fuel combustion technology. However, knowledge gaps relating to large scale coal based and natural gas based power plants with CO2 capture still exist, such as combustors and boilers operating at higher temperatures and design of CO2 turbines and compressors. To apply the oxy-fuel combustion technology on power plants, much work is focused on the fundamental and feasibility study regarding combustion characterization, process and system analysis, and economic evaluation etc. Further studies from system perspective point of view are highlighted, such as the impact of operating conditions on system performance and on advanced cycle integrated with oxy-fuel combustion for CO2 capture. In this thesis, the characterization for flue gas recycle (FGR) was theoretically derived based on mass balance of combustion reactions, and system modeling was conducted by using a process simulator, Aspen Plus. Important parameters such as FGR rate and ratio, flue gas composition, and electrical efficiency etc. were analyzed and discussed based on different operational conditions. An advanced evaporative gas turbine (EvGT) cycle with oxy-fuel combustion for CO2 capture was also studied. Based on economic indicators such as specific investment cost (SIC), cost of electricity (COE), and cost of CO2avoidance (COA), economic performance was evaluated and compared among various system configurations. The system configurations include an EvGT cycle power plant without CO2 capture, an EvGT cycle power plant with chemical absorption for CO2 capture, and a combined cycle power plant. The study shows that FGR ratio is of importance, which has impact not only on heat transfer but also on mass transfer in the oxy-coal combustion process. Significant reduction in the amount of flue gas can be achieved due to the flue gas recycling, particularly for the system with more prior upstream recycle options. Although the recycle options have almost no effect on FGR ratio, flue gas flow rate, and system electrical efficiency, FGR options have significant effects on flue gas compositions, especially the concentrations of CO2 and H2O, and heat exchanger duties. In addition, oxygen purity and water/gas ratio, respectively, have an optimum value for an EvGT cycle power plant with oxy-fuel combustion. Oxygen purity of 97 mol% and water/gas ratio of 0.133 can be considered as the optimum values for the studied system. For optional operating conditions of flue gas recycling, the exhaust gas recycled after condensing (dry recycle) results in about 5 percentage points higher electrical efficiency and about 45 % more cooling water consumption comparing with the exhaust gas recycled before condensing (wet recycle). The direct costs of EvGT cycle with oxy-fuel combustion are a little higher than the direct costs of EvGT cycle with chemical absorption. However, as plant size is larger than 60 MW, even though the EvGT cycle with oxy-fuel combustion has a higher COE than the EvGT cycle with chemical absorption, the EvGT cycle with oxy-fuel combustion has a lower COA. Further, compared with others studies of natural gas combined cycle (NGCC), the EvGT system has a lower COE and COA than the NGCC system no matter which CO2 capture technology is integrated.