Efficient Chemicals Production via Chemical Looping
Executive Summary
Technical Challenge
- Identifying the appropriate redox pair materials
- Low cost reactor design and construction
Potential Impact
Chemical looping technology offers a unique and effective approach to overcome thermodynamic limitations in nonoxidative upgrading of natural gas to high value aromatic products, e.g., benzene and toluene. It also has the potential to increase the energy efficiency through more efficient heat management. Since natural gas extraction sites are often located in remote areas, the ability to produce easy-to-transport liquid aromatic products, rather than gaseous products, will drastically reduce the transportation cost. Further, the development of modular reactors, a customizable control mechanism and a predictive computational model for materials screening will accelerate and reduce the cost of the prototyping of chemical looping processes for applications beyond natural gas. The successful implementation of this project could substantially improve the competitiveness of US chemical and energy industries.
Resources
The University of Delaware has extensive experience in catalysts and redox materials. Dow Chemical brings expertise in Techno-economic analysis for continuous chemical looping reactor design.