DOE-Supported Project Advances Clean Coal, Carbon Capture Technology
Update: The MIT Technology Review daily newsletter recently featured this story, and NBC Channel 4 covered it on February 6. If you missed the broadcast, you can now watch Dr. Fan's story on NBC4i's website.
On February 20, FoxNews.com featured this story on the front page of its website.
Chemical looping is an advanced technology that offers several advantages over traditional combustion. In a chemical-looping system, a metal oxide, such as an iron oxide, provides the oxygen for combustion. The metal oxide releases its oxygen in a fuel reactor with a reducing atmosphere, and the oxygen reacts with the fuel. The reduced metal cycles back to an oxidation chamber where the metal oxide is regenerated by contact with air. The metal oxide is then reintroduced into the fuel reactor, thus completing the loop. Since CO2 separation occurs simultaneously with coal conversion, chemical looping offers a low-cost scheme for carbon capture. The process can produce power, synthesis gas, or hydrogen in addition to high-purity CO2.
OSU reports that the CDCL plant’s 200+ hours of operation, using metallurgical coke and subbituminous and lignite coals, shows the robustness of its novel moving-bed design and non-mechanical valve operation. The combination resulted in nearly 100 percent solid fuel conversion and a CO2 stream more than 99 percent pure, making it applicable to CO2 enhanced oil recovery operations.
The OSU project is expected to benefit the DOE Carbon Capture Program by identifying oxygen carriers and a chemical looping process having the potential to control multiple pollutants, including sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx), along with CO2. OSU research aims to identify potential barriers and optimize the CDCL technology and provide realistic data for future technological and economic analysis.
In addition to DOE, OSU is partnering on the project with the Ohio Department of Development, Babcock & Wilcox Power Generation Group, Inc., CONSOL Energy Inc., and Clear Skies Consulting LLC.
In a related project, DOE’s National Carbon Capture Center in Wilsonville, Ala., will serve as the host site for the construction and operation of a fully integrated 250 kWt pressurized syngas chemical looping pilot unit starting this year. The facility will be used to further prove the operability and economic feasibility of OSU’s advanced chemical looping technologies.