The Department of Energy said Monday it would provide more than $10 million in funding to eight projects for advanced combustion systems research. The projects, funded by the Office of Fossil Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory, encompass research in oxy-combustion and chemical looping–based power systems.
“By developing efficient and economically viable combustion systems that generate electricity with near-zero emissions, DOE’s Advanced Combustion Systems Program contributes to the Administration’s priority of addressing climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” DOE said. “Central to the program are systems based on oxy-combustion, in which fuel is combusted with oxygen rather than air, and chemical looping combustion, in which oxygen is supplied to the fuel via a solid oxygen carrier. In both cases the resultant flue gas is a concentrated stream of carbon dioxide (CO2), enabling efficient and effective carbon capture.”
“The newly selected projects will improve the overall economics for these two technology pathways, ensuring that their technical performance and cost are substantially better than today’s baseline pulverized coal power plant with post-combustion capture,” the department release adds.
The selected oxy-combustion projects are:
- Brigham Young University’s “Development of Enabling Technologies for a Pressurized Dry Feed Oxy-Coal Reactor,” receiving $1.1 million;
- The Electric Power Research Institute’s “Enabling Staged Pressurized Oxy-Combustion: Improving Flexibility and Performance at Reduced Cost,” receiving nearly $1.2 million;
- TDA Research’s “Oxy-combustion System Process Optimization,” receiving $1.1 million;
- The NASA Center for Space Exploration and Technology Research at the University of Texas at El Paso’s “Technology Demonstration of a High-Pressure Swirl Oxy-Coal Combustor,” also receiving $1.1 million;
- Reaction Engineering International’s “Characterizing Impacts of Dry Coal Feeding in High-Pressure Oxy-Coal Combustion System,” awarded $1.2 million; and
- The Illinois State Geological Survey at the University of Illinois at Urbana’s “Catalytic Removal of Oxygen and Pollutants in Exhaust Gases from Pressurized Oxy-Combustors,” receiving $1.5 million.
The selected chemical looping projects are:
- The University of Utah’s “Development of Enabling Technologies for Chemical Looping Combustion and Chemical Looping with Oxygen Uncoupling,” with $1.3 million; and
- Ohio State University’s “Heat Integration Optimization and Dynamic Modeling Investigation for Advancing the Coal Direct Chemical Looping Process,” with $1.5 million.