IEAGHG High Temperature Solid Looping Cycles Network – Combined meeting report

Publication Overview

The 6th HTSLCN Meeting took place from 1st to 2nd September 2015 at the Department of Energy, Politecnico di Milano, in Italy. 72 attendees from 19 countries enjoyed a two-day programme with 45 presentations, site visits to research facilities at Politecnico di Milano and a stunning dinner at Lake Como. Two keynotes covered the progress made in calcium and chemical looping technologies respectively in the last decade. The technical sessions provided the latest advances in calcium and chemical looping pilot plant testing, solid carrier fundamentals, system modelling, process and heat integration, and sorption enhanced reforming technologies. Other topics were utilisation of biomass as a fuel, techno-economics of a large-scale packed bed reactor for chemical looping and the application of calcium looping in cement plants. The meeting formally closed with a discussion forum that summarised the main conclusions from the earlier presentations and the most burning issues for the future. The 7th HTSLCN Meeting will take place from 4th to 5th September 2017 at Swerea MEFOS in Luleå, Sweden.

Publication Summary

At the beginning, Matteo Romano (Politecnico di Milano) and Jasmin Kemper (IEAGHG) welcomed all participants to the meeting. Then, Giovanni Lozza (Dean of the School of Industrial and Information Engineering at Politecnico di Milano) gave a short welcome speech about the history of the Department of Energy and the importance to move new technologies through to industrial commercialisation, so that they become state-of-the-art. Two keynotes covered the progress made in calcium and chemical looping technologies respectively in the last decade.

Progress on the CaL PCC process, Carlos Abanades (CSIC-INCAR

The presentation started out with the question “Why post-combustion CO₂ capture by CaL?” and subsequently delivered the answers. Benefits of the CaL process include a relatively cheap sorbent and a lower energy penalty of around 6-8%, as compared to 8-12% for solvent-based PCC processes, and thus a low cost per ton of CO₂ captured. The sorbent, CaO, further offers the potential of integration of the process into a cement plant. Due to the co-capture of SO₂, the flue gas does not require prior desulphurisation and the process in general is very suitable for retrofitting. Thus, interest in this technology is growing, as the ever-increasing number of publications on the topic confirms. Since 2005, CaL has progressed from TRL 2 to 6, with a number of pilot plants now existing that exceed 1 MWth scale and 2000h of operation. Further improvements of the CaL process are possible by improving sorbent activity, reducing heat demand in the calciner and alternative reactor/process designs. Another important takeaway message is that sorbent related issues, such as attrition, are no longer a pitfall for standard CaL processes.

4Progress on CLC processes, Tobias Mattisson (Chalmers University)

CLC processes have achieved a similar technology development as CaL, increasing their TRL to 6 since 2005. More than 1000 materials based on Fe, Mn, Ni, Cu and Co have been screened and actual operational experience is now exceeding 7000h and 1 MWth scale. CLC can achieve 100% CO₂ capture and complete gas conversion with gaseous and liquid fuels. However, for solid fuels gas conversion is between 80-95% and CO₂ capture rate below 99%. Several projects, such as NoCO₂ and ACCLAIM, investigate CLC with solid fuels and aim to increase the performance of the process. The presentation highlighted many low-cost materials are available for CLC oxygen carriers (OC), e.g. high-concentration Mn oxides, ilmenite and industrial Fe oxide waste materials. Another benefit of CLC is that it relies on state-of-the-art circulating fluidised bed (CFB) design, so common and commercialised technology components. The expected efficiency penalty of CLC is about 4% and the cost of CO2 capture in the range of 16-26 €/tCO₂. Focus should now be on demonstrating cheap materials work in large scale and exploring the potential of chemical looping reforming (CLR) technologies.