Patent ID: 8459039

Claim:
A system, comprising: a gas turbine including a turbine compressor and an expander, wherein the turbine compressor discharges an air stream in connection with compressing air used during combustion; a separate compressor configured to receive the air stream and compress the air stream to generate a pressurized stream; a first heat exchanger configured to receive at least a portion of the pressurized stream and indirectly heat the pressurized stream using heat from an oxygen stream from an Ion Transport Membrane (ITM); a second heat exchanger configured to receive at least a portion of the pressurized stream and indirectly heat the pressurized stream to an ITM inlet temperature using heat from a non-permeate stream from the ITM which has been further heated; the ITM configured to receive the heated pressurized stream from the second heat exchanger and generate the oxygen stream and the non-permeate stream, wherein the non-permeate stream is passed to a fuel gas burner and the oxygen stream is passed to the first heat exchanger; the fuel gas burner configured to receive the non-permeate stream and combust a fuel gas in combination with the non-permeate stream to generate a heated non-permeate stream, the second heat exchanger configured to receive the heated non-permeate stream from the fuel gas burner and heat at least a portion of the pressurized stream using heat from the heated non-permeate stream, wherein the heated non-permeate stream is cooled during the indirect heating; a conduit configured to receive a cooled non-permeate stream from the second heat exchanger and introduce the cooled non-permeate a gas turbine burner; and the gas turbine burner which combusts a fuel gas mixed with at least a portion of the cooled non-permeate stream in air, wherein a temperature of the combination of a mixture fuel gas and the cooled non-permeate stream is below a predefined threshold temperature for the gas turbine burner, and a concentration of oxygen in the cooled non-permeate stream is such that when mixed with a fuel gas results in an oxygen concentration below a lower flammable limit of the mixture.