Research and Development of Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Coal-Fired Power Systems

Using supercritical carbon dioxide (S-CO2) Brayton cycle instead of the traditional steam Rankine cycle is a promising technique to enhance the coal-fired power generation efficiency. Researchers from all over the world are actively designing and exploring efficient S-CO2 coal-fired power plants in recent years with great efforts made to overcome the significant technical challenges in the cycle layouts of S-CO2 and its specific thermal integration with coal-fired heat resources. This paper provides a detailed review of the research progress on the coal-fired power generation using S-CO2 Brayton cycles. The basic knowledge of S-CO2 properties, the promising S-CO2 power cycles and the conceptual designs for S-CO2 coal-fired power plants are comprehensively summarized, with some key issues in the constructing process and the corresponding engineering solutions being emphatically discussed. Based on the current achievements, the overall technical and economic evaluations on the S-CO2 coal-fired power system are figured out. Furthermore, the specific integration applications of S-CO2 cycles with different coal firing devices and modes including pulverized coal combustion, circulating fluidized bed combustion, oxy-coal combustion, pressurized fluidized bed combustion, chemical looping combustion are discussed. Finally, the main challenges requiring further studies are highlighted.