Thermodynamic analysis of a directly heated oxyfuel supercritical power system

Directly heated supercritical oxy-fuel gas turbines have potential to provide a higher thermal efficiency and lower pollutant emissions compared to current gas turbine systems. Motivated by the advantages of an oxyfuel-based directly heated supercritical power system, this paper presents an analysis of different operating conditions using ASPEN HYSYS®. This study first investigates the efficiency of gaseous or liquid methane and oxygen feed systems. T-s and P-v diagrams are generated and compared to each other to determine which is more efficient. The analysis revealed that the entropy generated during the combustion process for a liquid feed system is approximately three times higher than when methane and oxygen are compressed in gaseous form and delivered to the combustor and burned. To mitigate the high temperatures (3300 K) of the methane and oxygen combustion reaction, carbon dioxide is recirculated. For this portion of the system, the use of gaseous and liquid carbon dioxide recirculation loops and their corresponding efficiencies are determined. The investigation shows that the system yielded a higher net efficiency of 55.1% when gaseous carbon dioxide is recirculated as a diluent with liquid methane and oxygen delivery to the combustor.