Chemical Engineering Journal, Vol.334, 2238-2249, 2018
The consecutive calcination/sulfation in calcium looping for CO2 capture: Particle modeling and behaviour investigation
Calcium looping, basing on sorption/desorption cycles, is a novel and promising approach to capture CO2 from flue gas of power plant. In the desorption process, sulfation inevitably occurs accompanying the dominant calcination of sorbents due to the in-situ combustion of coal, and it demonstrates an interesting and representative consecutive multi-reaction mode which is different from the typical sulfation patterns. Unfortunately, the process is still lack of good understanding and accurate simulation. Here, we report our work on the development of a particle model involving the consecutive reactions, geometrical evolution, and mass/heat transfer. Then, the interactive behaviours, and effects of reaction conditions and particle parameters on the temporal and spatial changes in particle-grain geometry, the successive conversion of CaCO3, CaO and CaSO4 are studied. It shows that the model developed could get a more precise simulation than the conventionally used separate calcination/sulfation assumption, and clearly identify the interaction between calcination and sulfation. Furthermore, it is observed that gas concentrations, size of the particle and its grains generate the most pronounced impacts on the consecutive reactions under the conditions of calcium looping.