Enhanced performance of copper ore oxygen carrier by red mud modification for chemical looping combustion

Zhenhua Gu, Ling Zhang, Chunqiang Lu, Shan Qing and Kongzhai Li

Applied Energy, 2020, vol. 277, issue C, No S0306261920311016

Abstract: Copper ore has been considered as a promising low-cost oxygen carrier candidate for chemical looping combustion (CLC) due to its high reactivity, but pure Cu ore suffers from serious deactivation during long term redox cycling. The present work proposes to combine Cu ore with red mud, an abundant polluting waste of aluminum industry, to improve the reactivity and stability of Cu ore for CLC of methane. Characterizations, redox experiment and kinetic analysis are performed on the mixed oxygen carriers to study the relationship between the physiochemical properties and the redox activity. The results show that the addition of a suitable proportion of red mud (30 wt%) significantly improves the reactivity of Cu ore. Specifically, the average CH4 conversion increases from 67% to 86%, and the actual oxygen carrying capacity rises from 8.2% to 13.8%. In addition, the activation energy for the reduction of Cu ore oxygen carrier by methane decreases from 76.6 kJ/mol to 58.5 kJ/mol after modification. The synergy among CuO in copper ore, Fe2O3 and other components (e.g., Na+, Ca2+, SiO2 and Al2O3) in red mud play an important role in this enhancement. The interaction between CuO and Fe2O3 promotes the reducibility of oxygen carrier via forming a more active oxide (CuFe2O4), and the presence of foreign ions (Na+ and Ca2+) and inert oxides (Al2O3 and SiO2) contributes to the enhanced redox stability of oxygen carrier via acting as supports or additives.

Keywords: Copper ore; Chemical looping combustion; Oxygen carrier; Red mud; Synergy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261920311016
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:appene:v:277:y:2020:i:c:s0306261920311016

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/405891/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 405891/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2020.115590

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Energy is currently edited by J. Yan

More articles in Applied Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().