Theoretical analysis of power generation applying supercritical steam and high-pressure combustion chamber consuming biomass slurry

The work presents a theoretical analysis of power generation based on supercritical steam generated by a boiler operating with high-pressure combustion chamber and consuming biomass-water slurry. Steam generated at 30 MPa is injected into turbines and reheated before proceeding to the second turbine stage. The high-pressure flue gas leaving the boiler is used to reheat that steam, and thus, cooled to temperatures below the dewpoints of alkaline species in it, therefore allowing their removal before entering the gas turbines. The exergetic efficiency is chosen as optimization function for the boiler, and the 1st Law efficiency for the whole power generation process. It is shown that a lower efficiency might be expected when compared the predicted by other similar theoretical studies. Such is mainly due the power consumed by compressing the air required by the boiler, the celling temperature of stream injected into the gas turbine, and the amount of energy spent on the vaporization of the water added to form the fuel slurry. A critical analysis of past and current proposal for power generation based on biomass describes how many technical obstacles have been downplayed in previous works.