Advanced Magnetic Air Separation Technology (Phase I Final Technical Report)
- Aqwest LLC, Denver, CO (United States)
Gasification plants can run more efficiently and be configured to more economically capture CO2 if the oxidant is oxygen rather than air. The combustion of fossil fuels in nearly pure oxygen, rather than air, can simplify CO2 capture in fossil fuel power plants. When pure or enriched oxygen stream is used in a power plant, the volume of flue gas can be reduced by 75% compared with air-fired combustion. The lower off-gas volume can not only reduce the removal cost of pollutants but also reduce NOx production due to near zero nitrogen presence. Traditional cryogenic air separator unit (ASU) is expensive and does not scale down to smaller, 1-5 MW-class installations. Membrane and pressure swing absorption (PSA) systems offer advantageous scaling to the required size, but more effective and robust materials are still needed. The lack of suitable technology impedes a wide-spread adoption of oxygen-based combustion. This condition calls for capabilities beyond the reach of existing technologies. In this Phase I SBIR, Aqwest investigated an innovative magnetic air separator (MAS) offering to overcome the remixing effect and delivering high-concentration oxygen from a simple, cost effective, and robust package. Oxygen has strong paramagnetic properties, which can be beneficially used to separate it from air. Work in recent decades confirmed the physics concept but the engineering development of practical devices has been stalled by remixing of separated oxygMAs en both by diffusion and by flow dynamic effects. In the Aqwest MAS, the deleterious remixing effects are overcome by a controlled laminar flow in microchannels. High oxygen concentration is made possible by repeating the separation process (staging). The Aqwest MAS has no moving parts except for the input air blower. The blower is also the key power consuming element of the MAS. The required steady state magnetic field is conveniently produced by permanent magnets and requires no energy input. The simple construction of MAS requires very little maintenance.
- Research Organization:
- Aqwest LLC, Denver, CO (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
- DOE Contract Number:
- SC0019663
- OSTI ID:
- 1599997
- Type / Phase:
- SBIR (Phase I)
- Report Number(s):
- REP-20200217
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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