Novel and Enabling Concepts

Innovative New Options for the Transformation of the Coal-Based Power Generating Fleet

Novel and enabling concepts are being investigated with the potential to achieve dramatic improvements in the cost and performance of coal-based power systems in the long term. The research focus currently includes enabling high-efficiency supercritical CO₂ (sCO₂) power cycles and pressure gain combustion (PGC).

sCO₂ Power Cycles

Integration of sCO₂ power cycles has the potential to further improve efficiency and cost of electricity (COE) power generation systems. Currently targeted concepts include the integration of oxy-fuel combustion with an sCO₂ power cycle. The sCO₂ power cycle operates in a manner similar to other power cycles but uses CO₂ as the working fluid in the turbo-machinery rather than steam and offers the potential for significant improvements in the efficiency and capital costs associated with oxy-fuel power generation. Research and development (R&D) is needed to design heat extraction components in oxy-fuel combustion units optimized to the sCO₂ power cycle, as well as recuperative heat exchangers, which will help to increase the cycle efficiency.

Pressure Gain Combustion

PGC has the potential to significantly improve combined cycle performance when integrated with combustion gas turbines by realizing a pressure increase versus a pressure loss through the combustor of the turbine. While conventional gas turbine engines undergo steady, subsonic combustion, resulting in a total pressure loss, PGC utilizes multiple physical phenomena (including resonant pulsed combustion, constant volume combustion, or detonation) to affect a rise in effective pressure across the combustor, while consuming the same amount of fuel as the constant pressure combustor. Current R&D is focused on development of rotating detonation engines (RDE), understanding how non-idealities in RDEs affect operability and efficiency, improving modeling tools to predict the performance of PGCs, attaining further basic understanding of detonation-inhomogeneity interaction, and aiding in improving combustor performance.