Performance and kinetics of iron-based oxygen carriers reduced by carbon monoxide for chemical looping combustion

Abstract

Chemical looping combustion is a promising technology for energy conversion due to its low-carbon, high-efficiency, and environmental-friendly feature. A vital issue for CLC process is the development of oxygen carrier, since it must have sufficient reactivity. The mechanism and kinetics of CO reduction on iron-based oxygen carriers namely pure Fe₂O₃ and Fe₂O₃ supported by alumina (Fe₂O₃/Al₂O₃) were investigated using thermo-gravimetric analysis. Fe₂O₃/Al₂O₃ showed better reactivity over bare Fe₂O₃ toward CO reduction. This was well supported by the observed higher rate constant for Fe₂O₃/Al₂O₃ over pure Fe₂O₃ with respective activation energy of 41.1±2.0 and 33.3±0.8 kJ·mol⁻¹. The proposed models were compared via statistical approach comprising Akaike information criterion with correction coupled with F-test. The phase-boundary reaction and diffusion control models approximated to 95% confidence level along with scanning electron microscopy results; revealed the promising reduction reactions of pure Fe₂O₃ and Fe₂O₃/Al₂O₃. The boosting recital of iron-based oxygen carrier support toward efficient chemical looping combustion could be explained accurately through the present study.

Keywords

chemical looping combustion / iron-based oxygen carriers / reduction kinetics / carbon monoxide / statistics

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Key Technology R&D Program of China (Grant No. 2010BAC66B03), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 21477061), and the National Basic Research Program of China (Grant No. 2011CB201502). The authors also wish to express thanks to Beijing Engineering Research Center of Biogas Centralized Utilization (Tsinghua University) for support of the experiment unit construction.

Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11783-015-0821-y and is accessible for authorized users.

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