Zero Emission Gas Power Plant (ZEG) - Verification of process design in laboratory scale

Within the last few years the idea of combining reaction and separation to simplify chemical processes, conserve energy, and/or to improve product quality and yield has received increased attention. With respect to hydrogen production from natural gas, wi th integrated CO2 capture, very promising results have recently been reported on new CO2-absorbents. Institute for Energy Technology (IFE), Christian Michelsen Research (CMR) and Prototech established the Zero Emission Gas Power (ZEG) project in 2001, su pported by the Research Council of Norway (RCN). In the ZEG-project a new hybrid concept has been developed for combined production of hydrogen and electricity from natural gas with integrated CO2 capture. The basic idea of the present project is to carr y out a laboratory verification of the ZEG-process comprising all the major process components. The project is closely linked to the ongoing ZeroGen program focusing on increased knowledge on reactor technology and absorbents for sorption enhanced react ions for hydrogen production with integrated CO2-capture, system design and modelling of new hybrid systems, fuel cell technology and sensor technology. The results from the planned tests run on the lab-demo will be important for the running ZeroGen progr am, and the experimental set-up will also permit tailor-made experiments with respect to all three subprojects in the ongoing ZeroGen program.