The aim of the paper is a comparative study of co-firing high shares of wooden and agro-biomass with hard coal under oxy-fuel and air conditions in the laboratory scale reactor for pulverised fuels. The investigations of co-combustion behaviour NOx and SO2 emission and burnout were carried out for selected blends. Detailed investigations were concentrated on determining the effect of dosing oxygen method into the burner on NOx emission. The paper presents the results of co-firing blends with 20 and 50% share of biomass by mass in air and oxy-combustion condition. Biomass oxy-cofiring integrated with CCS (CO2 capture) technology could be a carbon negative technology. The reduction of NOx emissions in the conditions of oxy-co-firing is dependent on the concentration of oxygen in the primary stream of oxidiser. A significant reduction of NOx was achieved in the case of low oxygen concentration in the primary stream for each investigated blends. Co-firing of biomass with coal in an oxygen enriched atmosphere enhances combustion behaviour, lowers fuel burnout and as a result increases of the boiler efficiency.

Natural gas combustion was carried out in air enriched with oxygen in the amount of 25 and 29% with addition of CO2 in place of part of nitrogen. The research was carried out at different flow rates of gas and oxygen excess ratios. The concentration of CO and NOx was analyzed. It has not been proved that the increased oxygen concentration influences significantly the CO concentration. However, the addition of CO2 caused a substantial variability of CO concentration in the exhaust gas, in contrast to the concentration of NOx which decreased monotonically. Model calculations, performed with use of FactSage, indicate an increase in the concentration of CO not only for the air enriched with oxygen, but after adding CO2 too, as well

Oxy combustion is the most promising technology for carbon dioxide, originated from thermal power plants, capture and storage. The oxygen in sufficient quantities can be separated from air in cryogenic installations. Even the state-of-art air separation units are characterized by high energy demands decreasing net efficiency of thermal power plant by at least 7%. This efficiency decrease can be mitigated by the use of waste nitrogen, e.g., as the medium for lignite drying. It is also possible to store energy in liquefied gases and recover it by liquid pressurization, warm-up to ambient temperature and expansion. Exergetic efficiency of the proposed energy accumulator may reach 85%.

Among the technologies which allow to reduce greenhouse gas emission, mainly carbon dioxide, special attention deserves the idea of 'zero-emission' technology based on boilers working in oxy-combustion technology. In the paper the results of analyses of the influence of changing two quantities, namely oxygen share in oxidant produced in the air separation unit, and oxygen share in oxidant supplied to the furnace chamber on the selected characteristics of a steam boiler including the degree of exhaust gas recirculation, boiler efficiency and adiabatic flame temperature, was examined. Due to the possibility of the integration of boiler model with carbon dioxide capture, separation and storage installation, the subject of the analysis was also to determine composition of the flue gas at the outlet of a moisture condensation installation. Required calculations were made using a model of a supercritical circulating fluidized bed boiler working in oxy-combustion technology, which was built in a commercial software and in-house codes.

This paper presents a gas turbine combined cycle plant with oxy-combustion and carbon dioxide capture. A gas turbine part of the unit with the operating parameters is presented. The methodology and results of optimization by the means of a genetic algorithm for the steam parts in three variants of the plant are shown. The variants of the plant differ by the heat recovery steam generator (HRSG) construction: the singlepressure HRSG (1P), the double-pressure HRSG with reheating (2PR), and the triple-pressure HRSG with reheating (3PR). For obtained results in all variants an economic evaluation was performed. The break-even prices of electricity were determined and the sensitivity analysis to the most significant economic factors were performed.

Among the technologies which allow to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, mainly of carbon dioxide, special attention deserves the idea of 'zero-emission' technology based on boilers working in oxy-combustion technology. In the paper a thermodynamic analysis of supercritical power plant fed by lignite was made. Power plant consists of: 600 MW steam power unit with live steam parameters of 650°C/30 MPa and reheated steam parameters of 670°C/6 MPa; circulating fluidized bed boiler working in oxy-combustion technology; air separation unit and installation of the carbon dioxide compression. Air separation unit is based on high temperature membrane working in three-end technology. Models of steam cycle, circulation fluidized bed boiler, air separation unit and carbon capture installation were made using commercial software. After integration of these models the net electricity generation efficiency as a function of the degree of oxygen recovery in high temperature membrane was analyzed.

The paper presents the structure and parameters of advanced zero emission power plant (AZEP). This concept is based on the replacement of the combustion chamber in a gas turbine by the membrane reactor. The reactor has three basic functions: (i) oxygen separation from the air through the membrane, (ii) combustion of the fuel, and (iii) heat transfer to heat the oxygen-depleted air. In the discussed unit hot depleted air is expanded in a turbine and further feeds a bottoming steam cycle (BSC) through the main heat recovery steam generator (HRSG). Flue gas leaving the membrane reactor feeds the second HRSG. The flue gas consist mainly of CO2and water vapor, thus, CO2separation involves only the flue gas drying. Results of the thermodynamic analysis of described power plant are presented.

In order to analyze the cumulative exergy consumption of an integrated oxy-fuel combustion power plant the method of balance equations was applied based on the principle that the cumulative exergy consumption charging the products of this process equals the sum of cumulative exergy consumption charging the substrates. The set of balance equations of the cumulative exergy consumption bases on the ‘input-output method’ of the direct energy consumption. In the structure of the balance we distinguished main products (e.g. electricity), by-products (e.g. nitrogen) and external supplies (fuels). In the balance model of cumulative exergy consumption it has been assumed that the cumulative exergy consumption charging the supplies from outside is a quantity known a priori resulting from the analysis of cumulative exergy consumption concerning the economy of the whole country. The byproducts are charged by the cumulative exergy consumption resulting from the principle of a replaced process. The cumulative exergy consumption of the main products is the final quantity.

The paper presents a thermodynamic analysis of the integration of a cryogenic air separation unit into a negative CO ₂ emission gas power plant. The power cycle utilizes sewage sludge as fuel so this system fits into the innovative idea of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage. A cryogenic air separation unit integrated with the power plant was simulated in professional plant engineering and thermodynamic process analysis software. Two cases of the thermodynamic cycle have been studied, namely with the exhaust bleed for fuel treatment and without it. The results of calculations indicate that the net efficiencies of the negative CO ₂ emission gas power plant reach 27.05% (combustion in 95.0% pure oxygen) and 24.57% (combustion in 99.5% pure oxygen) with the bleed. The efficiencies of the cycle without the bleed are 29.26% and 27.0% for combustion in 95.0% pure oxygen and 99.5% pure oxygen, respectively. For the mentioned cycle, the calculated energy penalty of oxygen production was 0.235 MWh/kgO ₂ for the lower purity value. However, for higher purity namely 99.5%, the energy penalty of oxygen production for the thermodynamic cycle including the bleed and excluding the bleed was indicated 0.346 and 0.347 MWh/kgO ₂, respectively. Additionally, the analysis of the oxygen purity impact on the carbon dioxide purity at the end of the carbon capture and storage installation shows that for the case with the bleed, CO ₂ purities are 93.8% and 97.6%, and excluding the bleed they are 93.8% and 97.8%, for the mentioned oxygen purities respectively. Insertion of the cryogenic oxygen production installation is required as the considered gas power plant uses oxy-combustion to facilitate carbon capture and storage method.

This paper presents the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) analysis concerning the selected options of supercritical coal power units. The investigation covers a pulverized power unit without a CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage) installation, a pulverized unit with a "post-combustion" installation (MEA type) and a pulverized power unit working in the "oxy-combustion" mode. For each variant the net electric power amounts to 600 MW. The energy component of the LCA analysis has been determined. It describes the depletion of non-renewable natural resources. The energy component is determined by the coefficient of cumulative energy consumption in the life cycle. For the calculation of the ecological component of the LCA analysis the cumulative CO2 emission has been applied. At present it is the basic emission factor for the LCA analysis of power plants. The work also presents the sensitivity analysis of calculated energy and ecological factors.

In this paper, thermodynamic analysis of a proposed innovative double Brayton cycle with the use of oxy combustion and capture of CO2, is presented. For that purpose, the computation flow mechanics (CFM) approach has been developed. The double Brayton cycle (DBC) consists of primary Brayton and secondary inverse Brayton cycle. Inversion means that the role of the compressor and the gas turbine is changed and firstly we have expansion before compression. Additionally, the workingfluid in the DBC with the use of oxy combustion and CO2 capture contains a great amount of H2O and CO2, and the condensation process of steam (H2O) overlaps in negative pressure conditions. The analysis has been done for variants values of the compression ratio, which determines the lowest pressure in the double Brayton cycle.

This article describes a thermodynamic analysis of an oxy type power plant. The analyzed power plant consists of: 1) steam turbine for supercritical steam parameters of 600 °C/29 MPa with a capacity of 600 MW; 2) circulating fluidized bed boiler, in which brown coal with high moisture content (42.5%) is burned in the atmosphere enriched in oxygen; 3) air separation unit (ASU); 4) CO2 capture installation, where flue gases obtained in the combustion process are compressed to the pressure of 150 MPa. The circulated fluidized bed (CFB) boiler is integrated with a fuel dryer and a cryogenic air separation unit. Waste nitrogen from ASU is heated in the boiler, and then is used as a coal drying medium. In this study, the thermal efficiency of the boiler, steam cycle thermal efficiency and power demand were determined. These quantities made possible to determine the net efficiency of the test power plant.