Engineering Development of a Coal Fired High Performance Power Generating System

United Technologies Research Center is heading up a team of seven research organizations to develop concepts and evaluate designs for a 300 MWe indirect fired combined cycle plant utilizing a 65% coal, 35% natural gas, fuel mix. The optimized design employs both radiative and convective air heaters to transfer the energy from coal combustion to the gas turbine working fluid. Because of present day materials limits, it is necessary to use a natural gas topping cycle to reach the appropriate turbine temperatures required for high efficiency. Our design for the high temperature advanced furnace (HTTAF) requires separating the air heater into a low temperature, dry ash convective section and a higher temperature, slagging ash radiant section. The major technical challenge of the program is in the development of the radiant air heater. Our approach is based on use of alloy materials protected b thick refractory coatings. The evolution of the design considerations will be presented. In addition to UTRC, the team includes Bechtel Corporation, ABB Combustion Engineering, Kraft Work Systems, Inc., PSI Technology, University of Dakota EERC, University of Utah/Reaction Engineering International and Fluor Daniel.