Civil and Environmental Engineering Research Seminar: Formulation and optimisation of process flow sheet models for industrial coal power plants

When?

Thursday 11 October 2012, 13:00 to 14:00

Where?

40 AA 03

Open to:

Staff, Students

Speaker:

Sanjay Mukherjee

Admission price:

No charge

Abstract:

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology has the potential to mitigate anthropogenic CO2 emissions from fossil fuels. Chemical looping combustion (CLC) is a promising novel technology for CO2 capture which can be used for power generation with gaseous as well as solid fuels to meet the future demand without CO2 emissions. The CLC process includes two reactors, air and fuel reactors, between which the metal oxygen carrier is transported to maintain a regular supply of oxygen for fuel combustion. This technology prevents mixing of nitrogen with flue gas containing CO2 by separating oxygen from the air before combustion process. Therefore, it reduces the energy penalty for CO2 separation from the flue gases, hence make CO2 capture more efficient and economic.

The aim of the project is to formulate and optimise the flowsheet for a CLC system using coal as fuel to generate power on large scale. As a part of this work, two flow sheet models of Integrated gasification combined cycle, one with CLC and one without CLC was developed in Aspen plus. For CLC system, iron oxide is used as oxygen carrier with aluminium oxide and silicon carbide (SiC) as support material. The effect of change in temperature on power generation with the CLC system was studied. The simulation results shows that 15.34 t/hr of hydrogen and 62.34 MW of electricity can be produced from 132.9 t/hr (13126 btu/lb, HHV) of coal with 100% CO2 capture. The simulation results indicate that the conventional process without CLC can produce 14.6 t/hr of hydrogen and 73.77 MW from 132.9 t/hr of coal, or equivalently, 1,000 MWth input. This process can coproduce hydrogen and electricity with 90% carbon capture. These flowsheets will be optimised for energy, efficiency and cost, later in the project with refined reactor models generated from series of pilot scale trials.

Bio: Uundergrad in Mechanical Engineering from University of Rajasthan (INDIA) in 2008. In 2010,  completed  MSc in Renewable Energy Systems Engineering from University of Surrey. Master’s thesis was on developing a hybrid power plant for a hypothetical community using combination of solar, wind and diesel.  Started PhD in July 2011 under the supervision of Dr. Prashant Kumar and Dr. Ali Hosseini. Research work focuses on optimisation of a new technology chemical Looping Combustion (CLC), used for power generation from solid fuels, mainly Coal.