SUMMARYFossil fuels provide a significant fraction of the global energy resources, and this is likely to remain so for several decades. Carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions have been correlated with climate change, and carbon capture is essential to enable the continuing use of fossil fuels while reducing the emissions of CO 2 into the atmosphere thereby mitigating global climate changes. Among the proposed methods of CO 2 capture, oxyfuel combustion technology provides a promising option, which is applicable to power generation systems. This technology is based on combustion with pure oxygen (O 2 ) instead of air, resulting in flue gas that consists mainly of CO 2 and water (H 2 O), that latter can be separated easily via condensation, while removing other contaminants leaving pure CO 2 for storage. However, fuel combustion in pure O 2 results in intolerably high combustion temperatures. In order to provide the dilution effect of the absent nitrogen (N 2 ) and to moderate the furnace/combustor temperatures, part of the flue gas is recycled back into the combustion chamber. An efficient source of O 2 is required to make oxycombustion a competitive CO 2 capture technology. Conventional O 2 production utilizing the cryogenic distillation process is energetically expensive. Ceramic membranes made from mixed ion-electronic conducting oxides have received increasing attention because of their potential to mitigate the cost of O 2 production, thus helping to promote these clean energy technologies. Some effort has also been expended in using these membranes to improve the performance of the O 2 separation processes by combining air separation and high-temperature oxidation into a single chamber. This paper provides a review of the performance of combustors utilizing oxy-fuel combustion process, materials utilized in ion-transport membranes and the integration of such reactors in power cycles. The review is focused on carbon capture potential, developments of oxyfuel applications and O 2 separation and combustion in membrane reactors. The recent developments in oxyfuel power cycles are discussed focusing on the main concepts of manipulating exergy flows within each cycle and the reported thermal efficiencies.

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Ion transport membrane (ITM)-based oxy-combustion systems could potentially provide zero-emissions power generation with a significantly reduced thermodynamic penalty compared to conventional carbon capture applications. This article investigates ITM-based oxy-combustion power cycles using an intermediate-fidelity model that captures the complex physical coupling between the two systems and accurately accounts for operational constraints. Coupled ITM-cycle simulation reveals hidden design challenges, facilitates the development of novel cycle concepts, and enables accurate assessment of new and existing power cycles. Simulations of various ITM-based zero and partial-emissions power cycles are performed using an intermediate-fidelity ITM model coupled to power cycle models created in ASPEN Plus®. The objectives herein are to analyze the prevalent ITM-based power cycle designs, develop novel design modifications, and evaluate the implementation of reactive ITMs. An assessment of the potential for these ITM power cycles to reduce both the thermodynamic penalty and reactor size associated with ITM air separation technology is conducted. The power cycle simulation and analysis demonstrate the various challenges associated with implementing reactive ITMs; hybridization (the use of both reactive and separation-only ITMs) is necessary in order to effectively utilize the advantages of reactive ITMs. The novel hybrid cycle developed herein displays the potential to reduce the size of the ITM compared to the best separation-only concept while maintaining a comparable First Law efficiency. Next, the merit of implementing partial-emissions cycles is explored based on a proposed linear-combination metric. The results indicate that the tradeoff between the main thermodynamic performance metrics efficiency and CO(2) emissions does not appear to justify the use of partial-emissions cycles.