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Fe2O3–Al2O3 oxygen carrier materials for chemical looping combustion, a redox thermodynamic and thermogravimetric evaluation in the presence of H2S

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Abstract

Alumina-supported Fe2O3 oxygen carrier material (OCM) system is among the most promising OCM systems for solid and gaseous fuel CLC. This work utilizes a comprehensive thermogravimetric and thermodynamic equilibrium approach to redox and CLOU performance, oxygen transfer capacity, reduction rate and sulfur tolerance of the Fe2O3 impregnated on Al2O3 OCM. Thermodynamic evaluations reveal that the beneficial composition range lies in a wide range of 7.5–34% molar Fe2O3 ratios. This is the range at which aluminum-rich corundum phase, i.e., (Al, Fe)2O3, remains stable throughout the oxidizing to very reducing oxygen partial pressures in fuel reactor. The experimental system in this study contains 20 mass% Fe2O3, i.e., XFe = 13.8% molar which lies well within this interval. Deep redox cycle experiments confirm the thermodynamic modeling and during the long residence time of this experiment, the sample is almost fully reduced and exhibits its thermodynamic redox oxygen capacity of close to 1.5 mass%. Extension of the deep redox cycles to 15 cycles induces no performance deterioration in terms of capacity, rate of reduction or morphological failure. The redox experiment under sour reducing gas indicates no H2S poisoning for the 20 mass% Fe2O3 supported on Al2O3 OCM. The findings that this system is not affected with the H2S content of the gas, and the prediction of the SO2 release from the fuel reactor is in good agreement with our recent reactor testing findings available in the literature.

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Acknowledgements

The work presented in this article is conducted as part of the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under Grant Agreement No. 608571 (Project acronym SUCCESS).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sustainable Energy Technologies, SINTEF Materials and Chemistry, P.O. Box 124, Blindern, 0314, Oslo, Norway

    Mehdi Pishahang, Yngve Larring & Martin Sunding

  2. Department of Energy and Environment, Instituto de Carboquímica (ICB-CSIC), Miguel Luesma Castán 4, Saragossa, 50018, Spain

    Juan Adánez & Pilar Gayán

Authors
  1. Mehdi Pishahang
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  2. Yngve Larring
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  3. Juan Adánez
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  4. Pilar Gayán
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  5. Martin Sunding
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Correspondence to Yngve Larring.

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Pishahang, M., Larring, Y., Adánez, J. et al. Fe2O3–Al2O3 oxygen carrier materials for chemical looping combustion, a redox thermodynamic and thermogravimetric evaluation in the presence of H2S. J Therm Anal Calorim 134, 1739–1748 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10973-018-7422-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10973-018-7422-5

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