Fundamental Study on a Novel Gas Turbine Cycle

It is important and necessary to develop a new technology for $CO2$ capture with less or even no energy penalty to make a breakthrough in greenhouse gas abatement. Towards this objective, we have proposed a novel gas turbine power plant, which is not only to capture $CO2$ in the stage of combustion, but also to increase thermal efficiency of the power plant. The chemical-looping combustor in the proposed system consists of a fuel reactor (fuel reacts with metal oxide) and an air reactor (the resulting metal reacts with oxygen in air). This new system requires no additional energy consumption for $CO2$ separation (i.e., no energy penalty) and no $CO2$ separation equipment. Here, we have identified several breakthrough points in the proposed system and summarized promising results from experimental investigation on the chemical-looping combustion.