Evaluation of technology options for future coal based power plants
Abstract
The United States has vast reserves of coal that make it one of the most energy rich nations in the world. In order to utilize these reserves and keep up with increasingly stringent environmental requirements coal based power plants are continually changing. Recent technology advances are changing the face of coal based power plants. Oxidizing coal to produce steam and drive steam turbines is being replaced by reduction reactions to convert coal to a combustible gas that is cleaned then burned in a gas turbine. These gasification combined cycle plants have many technology options available to them. This work uses thermodynamic, economic and statistical methods to evaluate how well these technology options will perform in order to determine the best combinations of technologies for these future coal based power plants. One of the future technologies that is available for gasification power plants is a fuel cell. Fuel cells convert the chemical energy in the clean coal gas directly to electrical energy. Fuel cell technology is not sufficiently reliable or cost effective to be realistically considered for current gasification power plants. However, if the technology continues to improve as it has over the past few years it will soon be an economically viable option. In order to predict the performance of a fuel cell in a gasification power plant, a fuel cell model is developed that predicts its performance when operating on gasified coal. This work demonstrates the effectiveness of using statistical methods to determine effective future power plant designs. Suggestions are given on important focus areas for gasification power plant development. Fuel cell technology is evaluated in the context of gasification power plants to determine when they will become economically viable and what technology advancements need to be made.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Groll, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Civil engineering|Industrial engineering
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