(681b) Chemical Looping Combustion, Gasification and Reforming: Perspectives in Commercialization Readiness

Chemical looping technology is a manifestation of the interplay among a broad spectrum of science and engineering subjects in connection to metal oxide physics, chemistry and reaction engineering, and particle science and technology. These subjects encompass three main components - Materials: metal oxide material synthesis, reactivity, redox mechanism recyclability, and physical strength; Reactors: flow pattern and stability, gas-solid contact mechanics, scaling rule; and Systems: process integration, intensification, and optimization. Such interplay is so complex that it has been over 100 years in which this technology has not been able to be commercially deployed.

However, with major advances made recently on the bottleneck areas in this technology development, the technology commercialization is now realistically possible and can be projected to take place in the near future. These advances include the successful development of chemically, physically robust metal oxide oxygen carriers that are cost-effective and sustainable to long-term redox reactor environment, and the successful employment of CO₂ and H₂O as partial substitute of carbonaceous feedstock for combustion, gasification and reforming applications thereby yielding CO₂negative chemical looping processes. These advances coupled with a novel reactor system design and operation give rise to a significant reduction in the capex compared to conventional approaches, when the chemical looping technology is used for carbonaceous feedstock conversions in the production of electricity, hydrogen, syngas, liquid fuels, and chemicals. This presentation will describe these advances that are established over the OSU moving-bed based chemical looping system platform. The presentation will also illustrate the rationales of its commercialization timeline with relevance to that for the fluidized bed-based chemical looping technology.