Determination of technical and economic parameters of an ionic transport membrane air separation unit working in a supercritical power plant

In this paper an air separation unit was analyzed. The unit consisted of: an ionic transport membrane contained in a four-end type module, an air compressor, an expander fed by gas that remains after oxygen separation and heat exchangers which heat the air and recirculated flue gas to the membrane operating temperature (850 °C). The air separation unit works in a power plant with electrical power equal to 600 MW. This power plant additionally consists of: an oxy-type pulverized-fuel boiler, a steam turbine unit and a carbon dioxide capture unit. Life steam parameters are 30 MPa/650 °C and reheated steam parameters are 6 MPa/670 °C. The listed units were analyzed. For constant electrical power of the power plant technical parameters of the air separation unit for two oxygen recovery rate (65% and 95%) were determined. One of such parameters is ionic membrane surface area. In this paper the formulated equation is presented. The remaining technical parameters of the air separation unit are, among others: heat exchange surface area, power of the air compressor, power of the expander and auxiliary power. Using the listed quantities, the economic parameters, such as costs of air separation unit and of individual components were determined. These quantities allowed to determine investment costs of construction of the air separation unit. In addition, they were compared with investment costs for the entire oxy-type power plant.