Effect of seawater, aluminate cement and alumina-rich spinel on pelletised CaO-based sorbents for calcium looping

Calcium looping (CaL) is considered as an emerging technology to reduce CO2 emissions in power generation systems and carbon-intensive industries. The main disadvantage of this technology is reactivity decay over carbonation/calcination cycles due to sintering. The main objective of this study was to evaluate the performance of novel sorbents for CaL. Three types of pelletized CaO-based sorbents for CO2 capture were developed by adding aluminate cement, aluminate cement with seawater, or alumina-rich spinel to calcined limestone. Different concentrations of seawater in deionized water solutions were tested: 1, 10, 25, and 50 vol %. All samples were tested in a thermogravimetric analyzer (TGA) under two different calcination conditions: mild (N2 atmosphere and 850 °C during calcination) and realistic (CO2 atmosphere and 950 °C during calcination). The samples were characterized using SEM and EDX. Aluminate cement CaO-based sorbents exhibited better performance in the TGA tests (25% conversion after 20 cycles achieved by limestone and 35% with aluminate cement CaO-based pellets, under mild conditions, and 11% conversion after 20 cycles with limestone compared to 15% utilizing aluminate cement CaO-based pellets, under realistic conditions). However, doping had a negative effect on the reactivity of the sorbent. Moreover, alumina rich spinel CaO-based sorbents showed the worst performance.