120kW Chemical Looping Combustion pilot plant

Vienna University of Technology

Wien | Website

Short Description

The 120kW Chemical Looping Combustion pilot plant is a fluidized bed system consisting of two circulating fluidized beds. They are connected at the top and bottom via steam fluidized loop seals, in order to ensure gas tightness. The bed material circulates between the two reactors and can transport heat and species (e.g. oxygen, carbon dioxide, etc.) without mixing gas phases of the two reactors. Different fluidization agents can be used for the two reactors at the same time. This allows investigation of processes, which are divided into two different reaction zones. Chemical Looping Combustion can be named as one example. Here, combustion of hydrocarbon fuels is separated into two different zones to obtain a highly concentrated CO2 stream. A metal oxide (the so-called oxygen carrier) circulates between the two fluidized beds. It is oxidized by air in on reactor and reduced by the fuel in the second reactor. This yields two different exhaust gas streams. One consists of nitrogen and excess oxygen, the other one of the combustion products. After condensation of steam, a highly concentrated CO2 stream can be obtained with nearly no energy penalty.
The plant is equipped with extensive measurement equipment (pressure, temperature, mass flows, gas analytics) and can be operated at temperature up to 1050°C. It is also possible to work with pollutants like sulphur or ammonia. In this case, more sophisticated gas analytics is available.

Contact Person

Senior Scientist Ing. Dipl.-Ing. Dr.techn. Stefan Müller

Research Services

Investigation of (reactive) bed materials for fluidized bed processes (e.g. chemical looping combustion);
Investigation of innovative fluidized bed processes;

Methods & Expertise for Research Infrastructure

The unit has a total operational experience of more than 1500 hours. With this extensive experience, it is possible to perform experimental campaigns very efficiently. Extensive measurement equipment is aivailable and can be easily extenden if necessary. Tools for data evaluation allow fast data processing and first results can be obtained in short term.