In this project, TDA Research, Inc. (TDA) has further developed TDA?s chemical absorbent-based air separation process that can deliver low-cost oxygen to various advanced power generation systems, including oxygen-fired pulverized coal boilers and Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) power plants. TDA?s absorbent operates at high temperature and hence eliminates the thermodynamic inefficiencies inherent in the conventional cryogenic air separation units (ASUs). Unlike the sorbents used in commercial Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) systems, our sorbent selectively removes oxygen (not nitrogen)
which allows the effective utilization of the large amounts of energy in the high pressure oxygen-depleted stream.As a result, the new air separation system is very efficient and delivers a low cost oxygen product. TDA, in collaboration with University of California, Irvine has increased the technical maturity and commercial viability of the new technology by: 1) demonstrating continuous oxygen generation at 0.1 kg/h with 98+% purity in a 4-bed prototype test system, and 2) carrying out a high fidelity process design and economic analysis. With the successful completion of the R&D effort, the technology is now ready for a larger pilot-scale demonstration and the technology readiness has been raised from TRL 4 to TRL 6. We demonstrated the prototype unit for more than 1,800 hours producing high purity oxygen. TDA?s ASU unit provides significant improvement in overall plant performance, increasing the net plant efficiency of an integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) power plant from 32%(in the case where cryogenic air separation is used to produce oxygen) to 34.05% for the cold gas cleanup case for GE gasifier. TDA?s chemically driven oxygen separation process also improves the efficiency of a system that incorporates warm gas cleanup, but the improvement is smaller at 35.33% vs 34.46%. The 1st year Cost of Electricity (COE) and the Cost ofCO2 Capture are also lower for the TDA ASU when compared to the cryogenic ASU. For an IGCC powerplant integrated with a cold gas cleanup system that uses GE gasifier, the use of TDA ASU instead of a cryogenic unit reduces the COE per MWh from $142 to $127.1 while the cost of CO2 capture including TS&M goes from $47 to $32 per tonne. However for an IGCC power plant integrated with a warm gas cleanup system the reduction is smaller, the COE per MWh is $134 vs $121.9 while the cost of CO2 capture including TS&M is $41 vs $27 per tonne.