An Innovative Gas Turbine Cycle With Methanol-Fueled Chemical-Looping Combustion

In this paper, a novel gas turbine cycle integrating methanol decomposition and the chemical-looping combustion (CLC) is proposed. Two types of methanol-fueled power plants, including the new gas turbine cycle with CLC combustion and a chemically intercooled gas turbine cycle, have been investigated with the aid of the $T-Q$ diagram. In the proposed system, methanol fuel is decomposed into syngas mainly containing $H2$ and CO by recovering low-temperature thermal energy from an intercooler of the air compressor. After the decomposition of methanol, the resulting product of syngas is divided into two parts: the part reacting with $Fe2O3$ is sent into the CLC subsystem, and the other part is introduced into a supplement combustor to enhance the inlet temperatures of the gas turbine to $1100–1500°C$⁠. As a result, the new methanol-fueled gas turbine cycle with CLC had a breakthrough in thermodynamic and environmental performance. The thermal efficiency of the new system can achieve 60.6% with 70% of $CO2$ recovery at a gas turbine inlet temperature of $1300°C$⁠. It would be expected to be at least about 10.7 percentage points higher than that of the chemically intercooled gas turbine cycle with the same recovery of $CO2$ and is environmentally superior due to the recovery of $CO2$⁠. The promising results obtained here indicated that this novel gas turbine cycle with methanol-fueled chemical-looping combustion could provide a promising approach of both effective use of alternative fuel and recovering low-temperature waste heat and offer a technical probability of blending a combination of the chemical-looping combustion and the advanced gas turbine for carbon capture and storage.