Chemical looping combustion reactions and systems: Task 5 topical report

Chemical Looping Combustion (CLC) is one promising fuel-combustion technology, which can facilitate economic CO2 capture in coal-fired power plants. It employs the oxidation/reduction characteristics of a metal, or oxygen carrier, and its oxide, the oxidizing gas (typically air) and the fuel source may be kept separate. This work focused on two classes of oxygen carrier, one that merely undergoes a change in oxidation state, such as Fe3O4/Fe2O3 and one that is converted from its higher to its lower oxidation state by the release of oxygen on heating, i.e., CuO/Cu2O. This topical report discusses the results of four complementary efforts: (1) the development of process and economic models to optimize important design considerations, such as oxygen carrier circulation rate, temperature, residence time; (2) the development of high-performance simulation capabilities for fluidized beds and the collection, parameter identification, and preliminary verification/uncertainty quantification (3) the exploration of operating characteristics in the laboratory-scale bubbling bed reactor, with a focus on the oxygen carrier performance, including reactivity, oxygen carrying capacity, attrition resistance, resistance to deactivation, cost and availability (4) the identification of mechanisms and rates for the copper, cuprous oxide, and cupric oxide system using thermogravimetric analysis.