Chemical looping combustion and gasification of waste-derived fuel: Performance assessment at 1 MW scale

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Waste disposal remains a contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, while waste-to-energy with carbon capture or gasification-based carbon recycling offers potential routes to carbon neutrality or even net carbon removal. Chemical looping can support both pathways: either through inherent CO 2 capture as a combustion process (CLC), or through generation of a nitrogen-free syngas as a gasification process (CLG). However, practical evaluation with real waste materials has remained limited to small scale. This study examines a plastic-rich waste-derived fuel at 1 MW th pilot scale with ilmenite as oxygen carrier, assessed from both CLC and CLG perspectives. Detailed analysis of the fuel-reactor off-gas, including heavy hydrocarbons, revealed only partial oxidation of volatiles and a consequently high residual combustible content with opposite implications for the two pathways. From a CLC perspective, while carbon capture related to waste-derived fuel was high, averaging 95 %, only about one third of the fuel carbon reached CO 2 , giving an oxygen demand near 60 %. However, comparison across pilots suggests that this is consistent with unfavorable operating conditions without a resolvable effect of scale itself. From a CLG perspective, the corresponding ∼70 % of fuel energy retained in the off-gas is favorable. However, less than 10 % was present as CO and H 2 , while methane, light olefins, and aromatics dominated, indicating a low yield of conventional syngas that appears fuel-intrinsic relative to biomass tested in the same plant. These results show that both pathways require further development, with route preferability linked to the policy and market framework.