A CO2-recovering nonpolluting high-efficiency gas-turbine power-generation system utilizing saturated steam as its working gas

A carbon dioxide-recovering high-efficiency gas-turbine power-generation system is proposed in which carbon dioxide (CO2) generated is recovered by adopting the oxygen (O2) combustion method and no thermal nitrogen oxide is generated. In the system, saturated steam produced by utilizing waste heat is adopted as the working fluid of the gas turbine. Thus, the compressing process of the working fluid gas, which is the most energy-consuming process in generating power by using a gas turbine, is not needed. This makes the system extremely high efficient. By taking saturated steam of 210°C as an example, the characteristics of the system were simulated. The net exergetic efficiency of the system has been estimated to be 48.4 percent by considering both the exergy of the saturated steam and the electric power required not only to generate high-pressure oxygen, but also to liquefy the recovered CO2. The value is higher than the exergetic efficiency 37.8 percent of large-scale thermal power generation plants using the same natural gas, and is 28.0 percent higher than its efficiency of 37.8 percent, the one estimated if the CO2 generated is removed and recovered from the stack gas by using alkanolamine-based solvent and the recovered CO2 is liquefied.