Quantitative rate analysis of experimental data relevant to chemical looping with oxygen uncoupling

The development of solid fuel combustion technologies which incorporates economic capture of CO₂ in coal fired power plants is a challenge that is being actively tackled by researchers. Chemical Looping with Oxygen Uncoupling (CLOU) is a variant of the Chemical Looping Combustion (CLC) process which is a promising candidate to achieve the aforesaid objective. Enhanced reaction rates (45-50 times greater) for combustion of solid fuels have been reported in experimental studies on CLOU in comparison to conventional CLC. This increase in reaction rates is attributed to the combustion mechanism in CLOU, where the solid fuel introduced burns directly in the presence of gaseous phase oxygen released by the decomposition of a circulating metal oxide (e.g. CuO). In contrast, conventional CLC necessitates gasification of solid fuels to synthesis gas which is subsequently oxidized by the circulating oxygen carrier. In this talk an interpretation and analysis of the reported literature studies on CLOU will be presented. The processes occurring in CLOU shall be explained with the help of developed mathematical models which take into account chemical kinetics and mass transfer effects. 1.