San Antonio-based Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) said on Aug. 12 it will get $ 3 million from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), and another $ 760,658 from an assortment of industry giants to design a large-scale flameless pressurized oxy-fuel combustion pilot plant. 

The announcement is a major boost for the promising, but yet unproven technology, that industry observers herald as a groundbreaking new approach to utility-scale power generation. As SwRI explained, “the process uses air that is stripped of other elements like argon and nitrogen until it is pure oxygen. It is then combined with a fuel, usually either coal or natural gas, into a stream of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and water inside a combustor. The fuel and oxygen chemically react, and the hot gas can be used to boil steam, which pushes a turbine that generates power.” 

Among the benefits of pressurized oxy-fuel combustion is that it has the potential to substantially improve overall cycle efficiency. Because it uses oxygen-rich combustion, it could also generate pure CO₂ that can be easily captured and stored, or reused.…

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