Large-scale oxygen-enriched air (OEA) production from polymeric membranes for partial oxycombustion processes

Abstract

Partial oxycombustion using Oxygen-Enriched Air (OEA), produced by air-gas separation with polymeric membranes, combined synergistically with CO2 capture technologies, reduced the overall energy cost of CO2 capture, and it is an exciting alternative to conventional CO2 capture technologies. An exhaustive review of polymeric membranes for this application is presented, where the best membranes showed permeability values in the range of 500-25,100 barrer and selectivities higher than 3.6. These membranes can produce OEA with oxygen molar concentrations of up to 45% for the retrofitting of large-scale power plants (~500 MWe) with partial oxycombustion. For OEA production, the polymeric membrane system is more efficient than the cryogenic distillation as the specific power consumption of the former is 43.96 kWh/ton OEA, while that of the latter is 49.57 kWh/ton OEA. This work proposes that the OEA produced by membranes feeds a partial oxy-combustion process integrated with calcium looping within a hybrid CO2 capture system. The energy consumption of the hybrid CO2 capture system proposed here is 6% lower than in the case in which OEA is produced from cryogenic distillation, which justifies the potential interest of using polymeric membranes for OEA production.

Este ítem es la versión preprint del artículo. Se puede consultar la versión final aquí https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2023.126697