Chemical looping combustion oxygen carrier production cost study

The objective of this study was to estimate the cost of commercial production of oxygen carriers (OCs) for large-scale application in a mature, chemical looping combustion (CLC) power generation industry. Estimates of cost were made for two production facility scenarios: (1) build and operate an on-site, OC production facility located at a 550 MW CLC power plant site; and (2) build and operate a central production facility to produce and distribute OCs to the U.S. CLC power generation industry. Two OC production techniques were addressed: mechanical mixing and co-precipitation. Representative OCs that have production raw materials with sufficient commercial availability to support a CLC industry are ilmenite, a natural OC, and four engineered OC types, Fe2O3-based, CuO-based, NiO-based, and CuFeAlO4-based, with candidate OC support materials Al2O3 and TiO2. The costs of the OC production raw materials represent the major portion of the OC product cost; the OC pro-duction cost, in dollars per kg, has been found to be nearly a linear function of the OC raw materials cost, in dollars per kg. The estimated OC product costs can be used to estimate the maximum OC loss rate yielding a designated CLC power plant cost-of-electricity (COE) target as a development guide, and it has been found that the maximum OC makeup rate, in kg per hour, achieving a designated COE reduction goal relative to a con-ventional pulverized coal (PC) power plant, will be nearly inversely proportional to the OC production raw materials cost, in dollars per kg.