Synthesis of a nanosilica supported CO2 sorbent in a fluidized bed reactor

CaO has been deposited on a nanosilica powder matrix by a procedure based on atomic layer deposition (ALD) in a fluidized bed reactor at atmospheric pressure following a potentially scalable process. In previous works ALD in gas fluidized bed has been mostly performed under reduced pressure, which hampers scaling-up the production technology. The material synthesized in the present work is tested as CO2 solid sorbent at calcium looping conditions. Multicyclic thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) shows that the nanosilica support stabilizes the capture capacity of CaO. EDX-STEM analysis illustrates the presence of Ca well distributed on the surface of the SiO2 nanoparticles.