Effects of steam and CO2 in the fluidizing gas when using bituminous coal in chemical-looping combustion

Chemical-looping combustion (CLC) is a combustion technology where an oxygen carrier is used to transfer oxygen from the combustion air to the fuel in order to avoid direct contact between air and fuel. Thus, the CO2 is inherently separated from the flue gases with a potential for considerably lower energy penalty and cost compared to other techniques for CO2 separation. The oxygen carrier is circulated between two reactors, a fuel and an air reactor, where the flue gas from the air reactor contains oxygen depleted air and the flue gas from the fuel reactor contains mainly CO2 and H2O. The water can easily be condensed and the remaining CO2 can be transported for underground storage. Most of the prior work with CLC has focused on using natural gas and syngas as fuel and oxygen carrying material normally produced from pure chemicals. However, recent work on adapting the CLC process for solid fuels with ores and natural minerals as oxygen carrier shows promising results. This paper will present results from reactivity investigations in a laboratory fluidized-bed reactor system using previously investigated natural mineral ilmenite as oxygen carrier and a bituminous Colombian coal as fuel. Experiments were conducted at a temperature of 970°C with N2, steam, and/or CO2 in the fluidizing gas. Synergy effects between steam and CO2 on fuel conversion was noted. The results show that the fuel conversion was a roughly a factor 5 faster with steam as compared to CO2 in the fluidizing gas.