Process design and performance analysis of a Staged, Pressurized Oxy-Combustion (SPOC) power plant for carbon capture Akshay Gopan a , Benjamin M. Kumfer a , Jeffrey Phillips b , David Thimsen b , Richard Smith c , Richard L. Axelbaum a,⇑ a Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO 63130, USA b Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), Palo Alto, CA, USA c Ameren Corp, St. Louis, MO, USA highlights  New pressurized oxy-combustion approach to improve efficiency for carbon capture.  Flue gas recycle requirement for temperature control reduced to near zero.  Efficiency increase more than 6% points compared to 1st gen oxycombustion.  Penalty for switching from high rank to low rank coal reduced significantly. article info Article history: Received 16 December 2013 Received in revised form 28 February 2014 Accepted 8 March 2014 Available online 16 April 2014 Keywords: Oxy-combustion Pressurized oxy-combustion ASPEN modeling Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) Fossil fuels abstract Support for carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) for coal power plants is limited, to some extent, by the high cost of electricity associated with available technologies. While a comparison of dif- ferent capture methods favors oxy-combustion technology, the cost is still prohibitively high and the effi- ciency is low. The requirement that CO 2 must ultimately be delivered at high pressure for storage or enhanced oil recovery has led to interest in pressurizing the combustion process, whereby the latent heat in the flue gas moisture can be largely recovered and integrated into the Rankine cycle, thus increasing the plant efficiency. In this work, the performance of a novel Staged, Pressurized Oxy-Combustion (SPOC) process is presented, which has the potential of increasing plant efficiency even further via reduction of auxiliary loads associated with flue gas recycle and flue gas cleanup. Heat flux and temperature are con- trolled with fuel staging and burner design. ASPEN Plus modeling of a conceptual power plant using the SPOC approach shows an improvement in efficiency of over 6 percentage points over first generation atmospheric oxy-combustion technology. The process design and results from ASPEN Plus modeling are described. Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Concerns over the implications of global climate change have led to several efforts towards minimizing the carbon dioxide emis- sions from human activities. Coal based electric power generation represents one of the largest single contributing factors towards global CO 2 emissions, and coal is projected to continue being one of the major energy sources in the long term because of its large reserves and low prices [1–3]. Thus, a need for immediate and cost effective CO 2 mitigation from coal based power generation sources exists. The three main ways to achieve CO 2 capture from coal based power generation sources include: (1) pre-combustion capture, wherein the carbon from the fuel is separated (as CO 2 ) before com- bustion using chemical processes, e.g., the Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) system, (2) post-combustion capture, wherein after combustion with air carbon dioxide is separated from the flue gas by physico-chemical processes and (3) oxy-coal combustion, where coal is combusted with nearly pure oxygen and recycled flue gas to obtain a high purity stream of CO 2 . First generation oxy-combustion technologies consist of burning coal with a combination of oxygen and a large volume of recycled flue gas at near atmospheric pressure. The recycled flue gas is used to control flame temperature and heat transfer in the boiler to yield conditions similar to those of traditional air-fired http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2014.03.032 0306-2619/Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 314 935 7560; fax: +1 314 935 5464. E-mail address: Axelbaum@wustl.edu (R.L. Axelbaum). Applied Energy 125 (2014) 179–188 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Applied Energy journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apenergy