CO2 mitigation in advanced power cycles

Abstract: This thesis encompasses CO2 mitigation using three different processes: i) natural gas-fired combined cycle with chemical looping combustion (CLC), ii) trigeneration of electrical power, hydrogen and district heating with extended CLC, iii) steam-based gasification of biomass integrated in an advanced power cycle.In CLC, a solid oxygen carrier circulates between two fluidised-bed reactors and transports oxygen from the combustion air to the fuel; thus, the fuel is not mixed with air and an inherent CO2 separation occurs. In this thesis, CLC has been studied as an alternative process for CO2 capture in a natural gas-fired combined cycle (NGCC). The potential efficiency of such a process using a turbine inlet temperature of 1200 °C and a pressure ratio of 13 is between 52 and 53 % when including the penalty for CO2 compression to 110 bar. It is shown that this efficiency cannot be further improved by including an additional CO2 turbine. Two conceivable reactor designs for CLC in an NGCC are presented. Top-firing has been studied as an option to overcome a temperature limitation in the CLC reactor system. The degree of CO2 capture is shown versus the temperature in the CLC reactor and its combustion efficiency. CLC has the potential to reach both a higher efficiency and a higher degree of CO2 capture than conventional post combustion CO2 capture technique. However, further research is needed to solve technical problems as, for example, temperature limitations in the reactor to reach this potential.Extended CLC (exCLC) is introduced, in which hydrogen is not only produced but also inherently purified. The potential efficiency of a novel tri-generation process for hydrogen, electricity and district heating using exCLC for CO2 capture is investigated. The results show that a thermal efficiency of about 54% might be achieved.A novel power process named evaporative biomass air turbine (EvGT-BAT) for biomass feedstock is presented. This process contains a steam-based gasification of biomass, which is integrated in an externally fired gas turbine cycle with top-firing. In the EvGT-BAT process, the steam-based gasification is conducted in an entrained-flow tubular reactor that is installed in the SFC as a heat exchanger. The EvGT-BAT process has the potential to generate electrical power from biomass with an efficiency of 41 %.