(208f) Mediated Oxycombustion with Integrated Uncoupled Oxygen Supply (MOBIUS)

In order to sustain the global growth experienced currently, the appetite for energy is going to continually increase. To meet this demand, it is projected that combustion of carbonaceous fuels driven electricity production will continue to play a major role. Coupled with this demand for energy is an increase in the public awareness regarding the need to maintain clean water and air. Therefore, to improve the sustainability of such processes, it is necessary to enhance the efficiency of these power plants and to find reliable environmental compliant solutions. Two such solutions are the Oxy-combustion process that uses oxygen diluted with CO₂ rather than air and the Chemical Looping Combustion (CLC) that employs metal oxide/metal redox couples. There are, however, bottlenecks for both processes. In the former, separate oxygen separation units operated by cryogenic separation or membrane separation becomes a necessity while the latter incurs the technical difficulty of hot solids materials handling as well as performance issues such as reduced conversion rates when dealing with solid fuels. In recent years, there has been a push towards direct carbon fuel cells (DCFC) where the electricity is generated directly in a fuel cell by the direct use of carbonaceous fuels. The primary technological hurdles of DCFC lies in the a) identification of a suitable metal/metal oxide anode system to allow the facile transport of the oxygen from the SOFC electrolyte to the carbon and have a sufficiently high open circuit voltage and b) a compatible electrolyte for the chosen material such the rates of oxidation are high without causing deterioration in the electrolyte by processes such as corrosion. We present a combustion system â?? Mediated Oxycombustion with Integrated Uncoupled Oxygen Supply (MOBIUS) that synergistically combines the effective aspects of the three above mentioned technologies along with innovations to overcome the hurdles faced by these technologies. We will discuss the development of the combustion system components. The key component of this design is a trifunctional membrane reactor based on suitably doped ceria that facilitates the oxygen transport. We will present the impact of doping on the oxygen uptake on the O rich side, its transport through the membrane and uncoupling at the O lean side.