An Innovative Gas Turbine Cycle With Methanol-Fueled Chemical-Looping Combustion

Abstract

In this paper, a novel gas turbine cycle integrating methanol decomposition and the chemical-looping combustion (CLC) is proposed. Two types of methanol-fueled power plants, including the new gas turbine cycle with CLC combustion and a chemically intercooled gas turbine cycle, have been investigated with the aid of the T-Q diagram. In the proposed system, methanol fuel is decomposed into syngas mainly containing H2 and CO by recovering low-temperature thermal energy from an intercooler of the air compressor. After the decomposition of methanol, the resulting product of syngas is divided into two parts: the part reacting with Fe2O3 is sent into the CLC subsystem, and the other part is introduced into a supplement combustor to enhance the inlet temperatures of the gas turbine to 1100–1500°C. As a result, the new methanol-fueled gas turbine cycle with CLC had a breakthrough in thermodynamic and environmental performance. The thermal efficiency of the new system can achieve 60.6% with 70% of CO2 recovery at a gas turbine inlet temperature of 1300°C. It would be expected to be at least about 10.7 percentage points higher than that of the chemically intercooled gas turbine cycle with the same recovery of CO2 and is environmentally superior due to the recovery of CO2. The promising results obtained here indicated that this novel gas turbine cycle with methanol-fueled chemical-looping combustion could provide a promising approach of both effective use of alternative fuel and recovering low-temperature waste heat and offer a technical probability of blending a combination of the chemical-looping combustion and the advanced gas turbine for carbon capture and storage.