Long-lasting Cu-based oxygen carrier material for industrial scale in Chemical Looping Combustion

One of the most important current objectives of the Chemical Looping Combustion (CLC) technology for gaseous fuels lies in scaling-up the aforementioned technology in the short term from 100 kWth to 10 MWth scale. In order to meet this challenge, the commercial availability of suitable multi ton-scale oxygen carrier materials at competitive price is needed. In this work, a Cu-based oxygen carrier prepared by the impregnation method using a commercial alumina as support, referred as Cu14γAl_Commercial, has been developed and evaluated in a 500 Wth CLC pilot plant during the combustion of CH4 at two different temperatures, i.e., 800 °C and 900 °C. The outstanding results obtained in terms of both combustion efficiency and mechanical stability have shown that the Cu14γAl_Commercial impregnated oxygen carrier can be selected to upscale CLC technology for gaseous fuels.