(91c) Oxygen Sorbents for Oxy-Fuel Combustion and Igcc Power Plants

Oxy-fuel combustion has the potential to dramatically decrease the environmental impact of producing electrical power, especially because it can be retrofit to existing pulverized coal power plants. In this technology, oxygen combustion replaces the traditional combustion environment of coal in air. This results in an off gas of steam and pure CO₂, which can be easily sequestered rather than released into the atmosphere where it contributes to the green house effect. However, the technology is not yet used in spite of its promise, primarily because pure oxygen is currently too expensive. TDA Research, Inc. (TDA) is developing a low cost, high capacity sorbent for air separation to supply low cost oxygen for oxy-fuel combustion. The regenerable sorbent can remove oxygen from air with very high capacity, and the sorbent maintains its capacity for over 200 absorption/regeneration cycles under representative conditions. TDA's oxygen sorbents also would find application in IGCC plants. Using oxygen instead of air in the IGCC process will remove excess nitrogen from the gasifier and there by increase efficiency, reduce NOx emissions and improve gas purity. Removing nitrogen from the fuel gas is particularly critical if the synthesis gas is used for the production of chemicals instead of electricity.