Oxy-coal combustion is one of the technical solutions for mitigating CO2 in thermal power plants. For designing a technically viable and economically effective CO2 capture process, effects by coals and configurations of flue gas cleaning steps are of importance. In this paper, characterization of the flue gas recycle (FGR) is conducted for an oxy-coal combustion process. Different configurations of FGR as well as cleaning units including electrostatic precipitators (ESP), flue gas desulfurization (FGD), selective catalytic reduction (SCR) deNO(x) and flue gas condensation (FGC) are studied for the oxy-coal combustion process. In addition, other important parameters such as FGR rate and FGR ratio, flue gas compositions, and load of flue gas cleaning units are analyzed based on coal properties and plant operational conditions. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.