Azep gas turbine combined cycle power plants - Thermal optimisation and LCA analysis

Publisher Summary This chapter illustrates that conventional fossil fuel based power plants produce flue gas streams with CO 2 concentrations of 3% to 15%. Existing atmospheric CO 2 -capture processes have significant energy requirements which reduce the plant's efficiency by up to 10 percentage points. Alternatively, combustion in O 2 /CO 2 atmospheres, whilst enabling almost total CO 2 and NO x recovery requires expensive and energy-consuming oxygen supplies. A less energy intensive proposition is the mixed conducting membrane (MCM) which produces pure oxygen from air. MCM are made from non-porous, metallic oxides that operate at high temperatures and have very high oxygen flux and selectivity. It has indicated that the most efficient and cost-effective utilization of the MCM reactor is its integration into a conventional gas turbine based combined cycle (CCGT) to produce an advanced zero emissions power plant (AZEP) concept. It also presents results of an optimized AZEP power plant concept compared with a standard CCGT without CO 2 capture and a CCGT with MEA scrubbing.