Over the next several decades, the power generation sector will face major landscape changes as CO2 management needs and hydrocarbon fuel options become limited. Uncontrolled carbon emissions from coal plants exceed natural gas fired alternatives by more than two to one due in large part to greater fuel carbon content and lower overall energy conversion efficiencies. In a carbon-constrained environment, power production from coal must realize improvements beyond incremental efficiency gains in order to have significant CO2 emissions reduction. Coal gasification and associated fuel gas process treatment units provide the mechanisms inherently needed to effectively separate carbon components on a “pre-combustion” basis, leaving essentially carbon free hydrogen fuel available for combustion within the combined cycle power plant. Gas turbines will play a significant role in meeting this generation challenge, not only from a fuel flexibility perspective, but also in the area of CO2 reduction where gas turbines will likely become the primary hydrogen energy conversion unit for the foreseeable future. Worldwide, GE gas turbines continue to demonstrate their proven, reliable performance on hydrogen bearing fuels, including installations with up to 95% hydrogen by volume. As the focus on pre-combustion carbon capture continues to grow, never has this experience with high hydrogen fuels been more relevant. Furthermore, GE continues to develop combustion designs to extend this experience to advanced gas turbine platforms, including F-class units operating on synthesis gas. The ever-present focus on efficiency improvement and emissions reduction, combined with improved gasification processes, will require future advanced combustion system designs that can achieve low emissions at higher firing temperatures with minimal to no dilution for NOx abatement. This paper discusses the challenge of low CO2 producing fuel for advanced gas turbines, firing hydrogen rich synthesis gas, in terms of gas turbine fuel and accessory system design.
Novel Sorption Enhanced Reaction Process for Simultaneous Production of CO2 and H2 from Synthesis Gas Produced by Coal Gasification
