Development of a Chemical Looping Combustor fed with natural gas and its integration with a gas turbine in ASPEN Plus

The lowest cost solution for carbon capture and storage in power plants at the moment is represented by chemical looping combustion. This technology nevertheless has not yet met the market due to scale up needs and also to the fact that to be coupled to a gas turbines a chemical looping combustor has to be operated at high pressure and high temperature. While high pressurization of the reactor can imply problems in the management of the circulation rate and the sealing between the air reactor and the fuel reactor; operation at high temperature can imply agglomeration, sintering and also attrition problems for the oxygen carriers. To analyze those problems a Mari Curie project has been funded under the Horizon2020 EU program. This paper presents the analysis of two configurations of the chemical looping combustor and of the coupled gas turbine. Both configurations are examples of possible bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) technologies. The aim is to compare BECCS efficiency with that of combined cycles fed with natural gas and using post-combustion carbon capture and storage, which seem to be the competing technologies. A methodology for the dimensioning of the pressurized chemical looping combustor to be coupled to a gas turbine of the power of about 12 MW mechanical power, is presented and applied also based on the results of experimental campaigns previously performed at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Instituto de Carboquimica of Zaragoza, Spain. Copyright © 2023 by ASME and Baker Hughes.