Conventional CO2 capture processes have significant cost and energy penalties associated with gas separation. Chemical-looping combustion (CLC), an entirely new combustion principle avoids this difficulty by inherent CO2 capture, using metal oxides for oxygen transfer from air to fuel. The process has been demonstrated in small scale with gaseous fuels. However, with solid fuels it would be difficult to reach high fuel conversion, with the oxygen-carrier materials used so far. But a new type of combined oxides based on manganese has the ability not only to react with gaseous fuel, but also to release gaseous oxygen, which would fundamentally change the concept.
The programme would provide 1) new oxygen-carrier materials with unique properties that would make this low-cost/high-efficiency option of CO2 capture possible, 2) cold-flow model investigation of suitable reactor system configurations and components, 3) a demonstration of this new combustion technology at the pilot plant level, 4) a model of the process comprising a full understanding, including kinetics, equilibria, hydrodynamics of fluidized reactors, mass and heat balances.
The basis of this programme is the discovery of a number of oxygen-releasing combined manganese oxides, having properties that can make a CLC with solid fuels a break-through process for CO2 capture. The purpose of the programme is to perform a comprehensive study of these materials, to demonstrate that they work in real systems, to achieve a full understanding of how they work in interaction with solid fuels in fluidized beds and to assess how this process would work in the full scale.
Climate negotiations and agreements could be significantly facilitated by this low cost option for CO2 capture which, in principle, should be applicable to 25% of the global CO2 emissions, i.e. coal fired power plants. It would also provide a future means of removing CO2 from the atmosphere at low cost by burning biofuel and capture CO2.
Fields of science
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