Self-Propagating Chemical-Looping Combustion of Solid Carbon Fuel with Copper Oxide
Open Access
- Author:
- Vasinko, Jarred
- Area of Honors:
- Mechanical Engineering
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Richard A Yetter, Thesis Supervisor
Bo Cheng, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- chemical-looping combustion
CLC
copper oxide
energy
emissions
solid fuels - Abstract:
- Coal is an extremely important fossil fuel for energy production throughout the United States and the world. However, burning coal and other fossil fuels is known to emit harmful greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a leading method for reducing CO2 emissions during energy production, but many current commercial CO2 capturing technologies are energy and cost intensive. Chemical-looping combustion (CLC) is a suggested method for producing a sequestration-ready CO2 stream from the combustion of fossil fuels by using a metal oxide to transport oxygen from the air to the fuel. CLC is a highly researched topic with numerous proposed fuels, metal oxides, and reactor designs. Previous studies have shown that with an externally heated reactor, the combustion of a solid fuel with copper oxide can occur through oxygen uncoupling and solid-solid reaction mechanisms. However, if a hot-spot is produced in a packed mixture of carbon fuel and copper oxide, the reaction may combust rapidly and become self-propagating. The goal of this study is to test this self-propagating reaction in order to better understand the combustion reaction of solid carbon fuel with copper oxide and to evaluate it as a feasible approach to CLC. The carbon fuel – copper oxide combustion reaction is modeled in a quartz tube under an initial preheat temperature with a laser igniting the reaction and the resulting flame propagation captured on a high-speed camera. The preheat temperature is varied in order to understand the impact of reactant initial temperature on flame propagation and intensity. A higher preheat temperature is shown to increase the flame front coherence and propagation speed. Multiple particle sizes are also tested, with the larger particle sizes producing significantly slower propagations and less coherent flame fronts. Two oxidation states of copper oxide are experimented with to observe the behavior exhibited by different stages of the reaction.