Abstract
The chemical looping combustion (CLC) process is a promising technology for capturing CO2 at the source due to its inherent separation of flue gas from nitrogen. In this regard, the present study is focused on the development of various Rankine cycle based CLC power plant layouts for gaseous and solid fuels. To evaluate the performance of these CLC based cycles, a detailed thermodynamic analysis has been carried out with natural gas (NG)& synthesis gas as gaseous fuels and lignite as solid fuel. For lignite based power production, in-site gasification CLC (iG-CLC) for syngas generation and CLC based combustion process employed. The Energy analysis showed that NG based power plant has a net efficiency of 40.44% with CO2 capture and compression which is the highest among all cases while the same for syngas based power plant is 38.06%. The difference in net efficiency between NG and syngas power plants is attributed to the variation in CO2 compression cost. For lignite based iG-CLC power plant layout, the net efficiency of 39.64% is observed which is higher than syngas fuelledCLC power plant. This shows the potential of CLC technology for power generation applications with or without CO2 capture.