Research Proposal

Proposed Research Topic: Chemical Looping Combustion and Gasification of Victorian Brown Coal Introduction: At present, about 40% of the worlds power generation is derived from coal. In Australia on the other hand, coal supplies 80% of the nations power consumption and this is predicted to be the case in the future as well. Victoria has large resources of brown coal which would last for about half a millennium at the current consumption rate. Unlike oil and natural gas, coal is more geographically spread out and is also cheaper . The demand for efficient and ecologically friendly coal combustion is increasing because the demand for cleaner energy is rising. It is known that fossil fuel combustion accounts for most of the greenhouse gas emissions due to the CO 2 produced. Reductions can be made by capturing this gas and storing in depleted oil fields or even in the deep sea. This is difficult because in typical combustion processes the concentration of CO2 is much lower than N2 and O2 resulting in costly separation of the CO2. This decreases the net power efficiency of the plant by about 7-12 . Chemical looping combustion (CLC) is a novel process in which CO2 capture and sequestration can potentially be achieved at a lower cost and energy penalty. In this process, a metal oxide is used as an oxygen carrier which transfers oxygen from the combustion air to the fuel thereby avoiding direct contact between the fuel and air. CLC consists of two reactors, a fuel and an air reactor. The metal oxide transports oxygen from the air reactor to the fuel reactor in which the fuel uses the oxygen from the carrier by reducing the metal oxide. This reduced state metal oxide is then sent to the air reactor where it is returned to its previous oxidation state, generating heat and making it available for reuse in the next cycle. Since the oxygen comes from the metal oxide, the fuel does not come in contact with air. This means that the combustion gases would not have N2 and unused O2 but instead CO2 and H2O. On condensation of the H2O, the resultant gas stream would contain concentrated CO2 without incurring any additional cost for expensive separation equipment as well as energy. The reduction step can be endo- or exo- thermic while the oxidation step is always exothermic. The total heat generated in these two steps is equivalent to that obtained using conventional combustion . This process has been studied extensively for natural gas combustion as well as for syngas derived from coal gasification. On the other hand, the use of solid fuels directly into the combustion chamber has not been studied to such an extent. Solid fuel CLC is beneficial as it eradicates the use of an energy intensive air separation unit which is typical for gaseous fuel feedstock. In using solid fuels such as coal, the feedstock in placed in the reactor where the gasification and oxidation occurs simultaneously in the same reactor. The main obstacle in using solid fuels in CLC is the slow gasification of the fuel and the large solid inventory of oxygen carriers. Important design criteria for CLC are solids inventory as well as oxygen carrier circulation rate between the air and fuel reactors. High recirculation rates are needed to maintain a high temperature in the fuel reactor. The solids inventory in the fuel reactor is determined by the solids circulation and the residence time for the fuel conversion. Specific research is needed for the use of Victorian brown coal in CLC reactors as there has only been one previous research in this area .

It is of value if the metal oxide used is cheap and abundant. Typically transitional elements such as Fe, Cu, Ni, Co and Mn are used as the metal oxide in the oxygen carriers. These carriers also have an inert which is used as a binder to increase the mechanical strength and attrition resistance as well as to provide larger surface area for the reaction while preventing agglomeration. Some commonly used inert materials are Al2O3, SiO2 and TiO2. Oxygen carriers play the most significant role in CLC and thus require special attention in its fabrication. The metal oxide should have a high affinity for reaction with the fuel while the reduced state should have a high oxidation rate by air. These should also have high reaction rates and be resistant to carbon deposition which can reduce the oxygen pores from clogging up. Iron, Nickel and copper are considered the most promising materials for the CLC process. Generally nickel is found to have the highest reduction activity . All the above mentioned factors make CLC a very advantageous process that requires further study to enable it to function well for Victorian brown lignite as a feedstock.

Scope and Methodology: In my proposed project, I intend to study the applicability of CLC for low-rank fuels such as Victorian brown coal and biomass. The project should ideally be a combination of experiments and modelling. The experiments are to be carried out in small scale quartz reactor and in a bench scale fluidized bed reactor. The experiments will involve identification of optimum oxides (mixed) for oxygen transfer from the oxygen carriers to a range of low-rank solid fuels.

For modelling, I intend to carry out the oxygen transfer from oxide carriers to solid fuels modelling, process modelling, and if possible CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) modelling of the reactor used. I will use MATLAB for the oxygen transfer modelling, for process modelling Aspen Plus, and for CFD modelling I will use Fluent.

Theoretical Framework: This project will be supervised by A/Professor Sankar Bhattacharya and Professor Klaus Hein. This work will build upon the research that has been previously done under A/Professor Sankar.

References: Cho, Paul, Mattisson, Tobias, & Lyngfelt, Anders. (2004). Comparison of iron-, nickel-, copperand manganese-based oxygen carriers for chemical-looping combustion. Fuel, 83(9), 12151225. Saha, C., Roy, B., & Bhattacharya, S. (2011). Chemical looping combustion of Victorian brown coal using NiO oxygen carrier. International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, 36(4), 32533259.