Oxygen transport membranes for power generation with carbon capture

Oxygen Transport Membranes (OTMs) can be integrated into thermal power plants to produce pure oxygen. This technology promises to enable carbon capture with higher energy-efficiency than many other carbon capture processes. Currently, it is however not a mature technology. The aim of the GREEN-CC project was to improve materials, lower costs, secure long-term reliability, and find the most efficient way to apply the membranes; all required to improve the technology. This thesis is mainly focused on characterizing and improving properties of candidate membrane materials, such as the stability in contact with acidic sweep gases and the oxygen permeability. First, a new auto-combustion synthesis method is described which allows to produce titanium-containing perovskite oxides via a wet synthesis route. Thereafter, materials have been optimized by substituting certain cations with others, for example yttrium is introduced into Ba0.5Sr0.5Co0.2Fe0.8O3-δ, and iron and titanium partially substitute manganese in CaMnO3­δ. While in the first case substitution significantly increases the thermal stability of the oxide, in the second case insights in the effects of crystal structure on the oxygen transport are obtained. Next to that, the oxygen flux of dual-phase membranes is shown to improve by increasing the surface area and impregnating with a catalyst. Following, the fundamentals of carbonation of strontium-containing perovskite oxides are studied in detail to provide guidelines for the stability of the materials. Finally, the last chapter deals with the simulation of combined cycle based power plants in which OTMs are integrated, which gives insights in efficiency and costs of electricity production with carbon capture using OTMs.