Investigation of SO2 Capture in a Circulating Fluidized Bed Carbonator of a Ca Looping Cycle

Calcium looping is a postcombustion CO2 capture technology that uses CaO as a regenerable solid sorbent. One potential advantage of this technology is that it allows flue gases to be treated with SO2, avoiding the need for a costly desulfurization step. In this work, we study the desulfurization capacity of a circulating fluidized bed (CFB) carbonator reactor in a 30 kWth pilot plant that has been used to test CO2 and SO2 cocapture. A simple reactor model is applied to analyze the experimental results obtained and to study the effect of the main variables involved in the process: i.e., the circulation rates of solids and the inventory of active material in the CFB reactor. The results obtained have shown that SO2 capture efficiencies above 0.95 can be achieved in a CFB carbonator even when using a low inventory of active material in the bed. Extreme desulfurization (SO2 emissions below 5–10 ppmv) is thought to be achievable in large scale CFB carbonators designed to capture CO2 with CaO.

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