Transportadores de oxigênio à base de manganês para utilização em processos de combustão com recirculação química

Abstract

The world’s energy matrix is essentially composed of fossil fuels and different studies show indicate that in the next decades there will be no significant changes in this scenario, which impacts significantly on the environment, since the burning of fossil fuels for power generation gives there main contibution to antropogenic CO2 emissions produces greatest amount of CO2. Carbon dioxide is the main anthropogenic gas responsible for intensifying the greenhouse effect. Because of this, scientists and politicians around the world have suggested a number of strategies and technologies to reduce CO2 emissions to the atmosphere for the next decades. Among these technologies, CO2 capture and storage (CCS) has gained attention in recent years. Studies conducted by the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggest various scenarios of economic growth and energy demand, indicating that in most cases the CO2 capture and storage technologies will contribute between 10-55% of the global effort to reduce CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere by 2100. In this context, the Chemical-Looping Combustion is considered one of the better alternatives to reduce the cost of CO2 capture, especially when compared to conventional capture processes, since it does not require the separation of CO2 from N2, once fuel is not mixed directly with air or oxygen. This doctoral thesis is focused in the development of five manganese-based oxygen carriers, which were first characterized in order to determine which of them are most promising to be evaluated in CLC processes. The techniques and characterization methods used during the first stage were: mercury porosimetry, fracture resistance, X-ray diffraction (XRD), temperature programmed reduction and oxidation (TPR and TPO), oxygen transport capacity (Roc), chemical composition, redox by thermogravimetry and rate index. Completed these steps, it was found that the carriers Mn- ZrMF and ZrSG presented appropriate properties to be evaluated in a discontinuous fluidized bed reactor, where the experiment conditions are subject to the CLC conditions. After the testing reactor, the oxygen carriers were submitted to the following characterization techniques: DRX, TPR and SEM (Scanning Electron Microscopy). Mn-ZrMF carrier presented problems of agglomeration during testing in the reactor, being considered inappropriate for CLC. On the other side, the Mn-ZrSG carrier showed high reactivity with the fuels used (CO> H2> CH4). Due this Mn-ZrSG is appropriate for CO + H2 combustion, but suffer deactivation during CH4 combustion. Do not showed agglomeration problems. The attrition rate was low and the lifetime was than 11.000 hours. Thus this material can be considered suitable to be used in solid fuels CLC.