Chemical Looping Combustion-Research for Power and Process Heat Applications

Paper from the AFRC 2014 conference titled Chemical Looping Combustion-Research for Power and Process Heat Applications by G. Richards.

Chemical Looping Combustion (CLC) has attracted significant research interest as a method to reduce CO2 emissions from power production. The concept uses an oxygen carrier material to provide the oxygen for combustion in a fluid-bed reactor. The combustion products are ideally just CO2, water vapor, and the reduced carrier material. After condensing the water, the exhaust CO2 can be used for enhanced oil recovery, or sent to geologic storage. The reduced carrier material is re-oxidized and sent back to the fuel reactor, completing the "loop" for the oxygen carrier. The CLC process has many features that are similar to conventional fluid bed combustion boilers which are already used for coal power generation. Research and development for coal power applications may have corresponding applications in industrial boilers, and the chemical process industry. This paper presents results of ongoing CLC research at the National Energy Technology Laboratory. The paper will discuss performance results of oxygen carriers, solids flow studies, and instrumentation used to measure hot solids flow. The paper will provide a discussion of how these results apply to large-scale power plants, as well as the potential for smaller industrial process heat applications