Techno-economic analysis of pressurized oxy-fuel combustion power cycle for CO₂ capture

Growing concerns over greenhouse gas emissions have driven extensive research into new power generation cycles that enable carbon dioxide capture and sequestration. In this regard, oxy-fuel combustion is a promising new technology for capturing carbon dioxide in power generation systems utilizing hydrocarbon fuels. Combustion of a fuel in an environment of oxygen and recycled combustion gases yields flue gases consisting predominantly of carbon dioxide and water. To capture carbon dioxide, water is condensed, and carbon dioxide is purified and compressed beyond its supercritical state. However, conventional atmospheric oxy-fuel combustion systems require substantial parasitic energy in the compression step within the air separation unit, a flue gas recirculation system and carbon dioxide purification and compression units. Moreover, a large amount of flue gas latent enthalpy, which has high water concentration, is wasted. Both lower the overall cycle efficiency. Alternatively, pressurized oxy-fuel combustion power cycles have been investigated. In this thesis, the analysis of an oxy-fuel combustion power cycle that utilizes a pressurized coal combustor is reported. We show that this approach is beneficial in terms of larger flue gas thermal energy recovery and smaller parasitic power requirements. In addition, we find the pressure dependence of the system performance to determine the optimal combustor operating pressure for this cycle.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Author dc:creator

• Hong, Jongsup

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Ahmed F. Ghoniem.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/50567

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/50567