David Berstad

The Role of Process Synthesis in the Systematic Design of Energy Efficient Fossil Fuel Power Plants with CO2 Capture

CO2 capture and storage has a potential of reducing CO2 emissions from large point sources such as fossil fuel power plants. CO2 capture is associated with substantial capital expenditures, operational expenditures dominated by high energy use and potential operational restrictions on the underlying industrial processes. The main focus of significant research efforts worldwide is thus to reduce investment costs and improve efficiency of capture technologies. The systematic methodologies developed in our group at SINTEF/NTNU for design of energy efficient fossil fuel power plants with CO2 capture are presented and show the importance of utilizing process synthesis in the design of such plants. These methods range from targeting minimum capture work for different CO2 capture processes, optimization methods for process design of pre- and post-combustion capture processes, developing surrogate models for optimization.

Multi-Scale modelling of a membrane reforming power cycle with CO2 capture

Abstract This work presents the initial investigations of an Integrated Reforming Combined Cycle (IRCC) process with CO2 capture using a membrane reformer. A geometrically generic 1-dimensional model of a membrane reformer has been implemented in Matlab 7.9. This model includes detailed balance equations for energy, momentum and mass in all three sections of the membrane reformer. Widely accepted empirical relations have been used to take into account the mass and energy transport across the membrane as functions of the conditions inside the chemical reactor. The reactor model has been integrated into an overall steady state IRCC process simulation model developed in HYSYS and GTPro. The work shows that multi-scale modelling is necessary to capture the behaviour of the process. The overall cycle efficiency of the process was 46.83 % with 85 % CO2 capture.