An Oxy-MHD Topping Cycle

Future Technology for Cost-Effective
Carbon Capture & Storage (CCS)

When developing new concepts today, it is also important to understand how the technology may evolve and become a commercial winner in the future. The path through to a genuine return on invested time and capital for stakeholders and early investors is often subject to high risk.

A good analogy is the start of the automobile industry 100 years ago where it was not immediately clear that it would be the gasoline engine and Model-T Ford that would dominate the market.  Both electric vehicles and the Diesel engine were, for a time, strong early contenders. It is only much later that also the competition managed to gain a foothold in niche market areas.

One of the future technologies that we are promoting emerged from our on-going collaboration with Shell International Exploration & Production in Houston. Their engineers approached us after having conceived what we now term a "Topping Ready" oxyfuel cycle that integrates a magneto hydrodynamic (MHD) generator in combination with an oxy-combustor.

In the 1970´s and 80´s MHD was pursued as technology that could improve the efficiency of coal-fired power plants and be deployed for military purposes.

The oil crisis of 1973 and the Cold War justified major investments by many countries to pursue energy security and advanced weapons technology at a time when nuclear deterrent had led to a stalemate between the superpowers.

Partly for these reasons, and also because the technology looked genuinely promising at the time, research and deployment for MHD received both civil and defence funding in many of the Western and Soviet-bloc countries.

In the United States the U.S. Dept. of Energy spent over $220 million during the following decade, while the Russians built and operated (until the mid-90´s) a 25 MW MHD power plant for utility electricity production near Moscow.

At its peak there were more than a dozen countries with govern-ment funded MHD Programs.

However by the late-90´s budgets had been cut: academic research and activity at government laboratories was all that remained -- coal-fired MHD was too expensive to commercialise and could not compete with the advances of gas turbines and focus on integrated coal gasification combined-cycle (IGCC) plants.

It is therefore interesting to revisit MHD almost 15 years later and to observe how the CES oxy-combustor removes some of the original barriers to commercialisation. A summary of our initial findings are contained in the above report that can be downloaded.

Although it is far too early to say if Oxy-MHD can becone commercial with CCS, it is a clear example of how known technology can be re-evaluated in the light of new challenges -- this time not the Cold War, but instead climate-change.

The project is currently in a Phase-2 of development with continued support from the Shell GameChanger Review Board.

If you have experience or information you would like to share with us regarding MHD and its past history, then please feel free to contact us.

(Updated July 2010)