Kinetics Investigation of Copper Ore Oxygen Carrier for Chemical Looping Combustion

Chemical looping combustion (CLC) has been validated as one of the most promising technologies for fossil fuel combustion, which can produce high-purity CO2 streams ready for capture and sequestration in power production. The selection of an appropriate oxygen carrier is one of the most important issues for the CLC process, and the reduction kinetics investigation of the oxygen carrier with fuel gas can provide the basis for CLC reactor design and simulation optimization. In this study, copper ore was chosen as an oxygen carrier, and the oxygen release property of copper ore under a nitrogen environment at various temperatures (1073–1193 K) was first investigated in a thermogravimetric analyzer (TGA). Subsequently, the reduction kinetics of copper ore with CO and H2 were evaluated by the TGA at temperatures ranging from 773 K to 1073 K, using a continuous stream of 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, and 30 vol. % of CO or H2 balanced by CO2 or N2. It was found that the reaction rates of these reactions accelerated with the increase in temperature and fuel gas concentration in inlet gas. Both the oxygen release process of copper ore and the reduction process of copper ore with reducing gases can be described by the unreacted shrinking core model (USCM). The reaction mechanism function for the oxygen-releasing and reduction process of copper ore oxygen carrier was varied. The activation energy of the oxygen-releasing process, reduction process with CO, and reduction process with H2 were calculated as 99.35, 5.08, and 4.28 kJ/mol, respectively. The pre-exponential factor ranged from 1.96 × 10−1 to 1.84 × 103. The reaction order depended on the fuel gas, which was 1 and 0.86, respectively, for reaction with CO and H2.