Publication Overview
The third meeting of the IEAGHG high temperature solid looping network was held from 29th August to 1st September at the Technical University of Vienna. It was held in parallel with a meeting of the IEA Fluidised Bed Combustion implementing agreement and the International Conference on Polygeneration. This gave the 108 delegates who attended the network meeting the opportunity to meet with those engaged in these other related areas. For this meeting a considerable effort was made to attract members of the Chemical Looping Combustion (CLC) research community which has been less represented at past meetings where calcium oxide looping (CaL) cycles for CO2 capture have tended to dominate. This should be a useful change as both processes use similar dual fluidised bed hardware and there is also emergence of hybrid schemes employing both types of reaction. Also several of the larger test facilities are now set up to test both CLC and CaL processes using the same equipment.
Publication Summary
The meeting identified a number of important emerging areas for research and development. High on the list is measurement of emissions. There is some concern particularly with CLC that trace metals may be emitted. A key to progress remains enhancing the performance of sorbents, mainly naturally occurring limestones but also engineered sorbents. Further improvements to oxygen carriers are also needed. In order to support industrial application there is a need for reliable testing and characterisation methods for these materials. Work is already ongoing on this issue at a few institutions. More work needs to be done on the retrofit and integration of the process into power plant and also cement and steel plants. To date much of what has been done has been optimisation of the basic circulating loop. In particular a large amount of heat contained in the hot CO2 and depleted flue gas stream has to raise steam or be otherwise used in the power plant. Whilst the general principle of how to do this is established the detailed layout of heat recovery coils and steam and water flows needs further work.
