Chemical-looping combustion of biomass in a 100 kW pilot

Paper in proceeding, 2017

Chemical-looping combustion (CLC) is an innovative carbon-capture technology with potential to drastically reduce the cost of capture. By using a circulating bed material to transfer oxygen from the combustion air to the fuel, air and fuel are never mixed and the CO 2 can be obtained as a separate flue gas stream, undiluted by N 2 . In other words, in contrast to other capture technologies, which are burdened with a significant energy penalty, carbon capture is inherent to the CLC process. Chemical-looping combustion of biomass in combination with carbon capture and storage would lead to so called negative emissions. Manganese ores are highly promising oxygen-carrier candidates due to high reactivity and high availability. Here, we present findings from a 100 kW chemical-looping combustor for solid fuels, using a sintered manganese ore called “Sinaus” as oxygen carrier and two kinds of wood pellets as fuel. Preliminary results from 6 h of operation with steam-exploded wood pellets show fuel conversion up to 75%, and essentially complete CO 2 capture. The expected lifetime of the oxygen carrier particles was found to be 100-400 hours.