Integrated combined cycle from natural gas with CO 2 capture using a Ca–Cu chemical loop

The integration in a natural gas combined cycle (NGCC) of a novel process for H 2 production using a chemical Ca–Cu loop was proposed. This process is based on the sorption‐enhanced reforming process for H 2 production from natural gas with a CaO/CaCO 3 chemical loop, but including a second Cu/CuO loop to regenerate the Ca‐sorbent. An integration of this system into a NGCC was proposed and a full process simulation exercise of different cases was carried out. Optimizing the operating conditions in the Ca–Cu looping process, 8.1% points of efficiency penalty with respect to a state‐of‐the‐art NGCC are obtained with a CO 2 capture efficiency of 90%. It was demonstrated that the new process can yield power generation efficiencies as high as any other emerging and commercial concepts for power generation from NGCC with CO 2 capture, but maintaining competing advantages of process simplification and compact pressurized reactor design inherent to the Ca–Cu looping system. © 2013 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J , 59: 2780–2794, 2013