Effect of the Carbonation Temperature on the CO₂ Carrying Capacity of CaO

High Resolution Image Download MS PowerPoint Slide The calcium looping process based on the CaO/CaCO 3 carbonation/calcination cycle has been proven to be an efficient CO 2 capture technology. Most of the experimental work describing the behavior of the CaO particles has been performed under carbonation reference conditions of 650 °C and 10–15% vol CO 2 . Although, process schemes recently proposed have pointed out the practical benefits of operating the carbonator reactor at lower temperatures, on the assumption that these would lead to higher CO 2 capture efficiencies. However, there is a lack of correlations for estimating the evolution of the carrying capacity along cycling at temperatures below 650 °C. Therefore, in this work the carrying capacity of a high purity natural Ca-material used as reference has been studied in a selected range of representative carbonation temperatures (450–725 °C). The parameters on the CaO deactivation curve that is widely employed have been readjusted to accord with a more general decay model that takes into account the effect of the carbonation temperature on the thickness of the CaCO 3 product layer that marks the end of the fast kinetically controlled regime.