Combined cycle plants with complete capturing of carbon dioxide for clean power projects

Abstract

The energy security of Russia is at threat due to recent trends of dependency of national power industry on imported technologies, equipment, spare parts, and materials. The next challenge is a tendency of more strict environmental standards and restrictions for power generation equipment. The paper considers one option to meet these challenges — using technologies based on compressorless combined cycle plant with complete capturing of CO₂ in liquid state (developed by JIHT in cooperation with NPO Almaz). This technology offers efficient production of heat and power from hydrocarbon fuel with a minimal environmental impact. This plant can be incorporated into a power-engineering complex with chemical products outcome. According to the developed scheme, the hydrocarbon fuel is burnt in a mixture of oxygen, provided by an air-separation setup (or another source), steam, and carbon dioxide. The components are compressed in the liquid phase. The heat from exhaust gas is recuperated in a developed heat recovery system. The steam condensation takes place, and the heat of condensation is utilized for district water heating in water utility grids and for capturing of CO₂ in liquid phase. Through varying of proportions between H₂O and CO₂ inputs, the proportions in generation of electric power and heat can be varied in a wide range. Our estimates demonstrate that this new plant has a thermal efficiency higher than for the best CCGT plants and close to the efficiency for the best worldwide analogs.