Decarbonisation Technology - February 2022 Issue

What is Horizon Europe?

has this been done on a large scale, and for this reason the modelling of the reactor and the chemical processes that occur during pressurised CLC appear to be of scientific interest. Effective models have already been developed at zero-dimensional level at the Instituto de Carboquimica, based on the shrinking core model (SCM), which is widely adopted in literature to describe oxygen carrier behaviour. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models have also been developed. Nevertheless, the effect of pressure on the CLC process has not yet been fully described. The GTCLC-NEG project aims to apply different strategies, which can be found in the literature, to model the fuel and air reactors using CFD software, with improved kinetic constants. Once the CFD model has been tested on plants available at the Instituto de Carboquimica, the data available will be used to design the final combustor and couple it to a gas turbine in Aspen Plus software. The mass and energy balances of the complete plant will then be verified by the proprietary software of an important gas turbine production company. Project objectives The main objective of the current project is to develop a new combustor capable of burning multiple biofuels derived from biomass (such as pyrolysis oil, biogas, and syngas) and to capture the CO 2 emissions at a very low cost. The development process will be efficient and cheap, and it will be possible to integrate it in a power plant with negative CO 2 emissions. This will be done by overcoming current barriers through proper training. Horizon 2020 was the EU Research and Innovation programme with nearly $80 billion of funding over the period 2014-2020. Many of the projects funded by Horizon 2020 are ongoing. Horizon Europe is the latest EU funding programme for research and innovation, with a budget of €95.5 billion over the period 2021- 2027. It tackles climate change, helps to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, and boosts the EU’s competitiveness and growth.

The programme facilitates collaboration and strengthens the impact of research and innovation in developing, supporting, and implementing EU policies while tackling global challenges. It supports creating and better dispersing of excellent knowledge and technologies.Legal entities from the EU and associated countries can participate.

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The following objectives will be developed by the project work packages:  Production of four innovative bimetallic oxygen carriers and characterisation of their performance at high pressures and high temperatures  Realisation of tests of CLC of three biofuels (pyrolysis oils, syngas, and biogas) in high pressure (1-1.5 MPa) and high temperature (1200- 1300°C) batch fluidised bed reactor. Attrition and agglomeration issues will be assessed  Development of: • Particle model, where the main kinetics aspects of redox reactions is analysed in critical conditions • Zero-dimensional model of the CLC reactor • Scaled-up model in Aspen Plus of the GTCLC plant  Realisation of tests with the best-performing oxygen carrier in a recirculated multifuel 1 kW CLC unit fluidised bed reactor, optimising the reactor injection and hot exhaust gas cleaning, to obtaining carbon conversion of >95% and CO 2 output of >90%.  Preparation of guidelines and an exploitation plan for the design of chemical looping combustors to be used with gas turbines; development of a system study in collaboration with an important gas turbines production company on the integration of the proposed CLC reactor into a power generation unit. Final optimisation of the plant’s technical and economic performance should lead to an electricity cost of less than 100 €/MWh and an electrical efficiency of higher than 50%. This will end up with GTCLC plant design guidelines.