The Need

Cyclic systems are required for energy conversion systems. In the clean energy industry, chemical looping offers promise for carbon dioxide capture from fossil energy. Transition metal oxides such as iron oxide, nickel oxide, and copper oxide have been singled out as the desired active oxygen carriers for their high oxygen carrying capacity, good reactivity and low cost among all the transition metal oxide candidates. Improvements around the utilization of these metal oxides for chemical looping systems would bolster efforts to optimize energy conversion processes.

The Technology

The addition of a low concentration of aliovalent transition metal dopant has a variety of benefits in chemical looping systems for the production of syngas from methane. Metals treated with aliovalent transition metal dopant are able to maintain high oxygen carrying capacity, and their chemical looping reduction activities are dramatically increased (by 700% or more). Dopants can create extra reaction sites during chemical looping, promote oxygen ion transport, and lower the reaction energy barrier during chemical looping.

Commercial Applications

• Energy conversion
• Chemical looping

Benefits/Advantages

• Improves recyclability of aliovalent transition metals
• Enhances the mechanical strength of the composite metal oxide oxygen carriers.
• Maintains the chemical and physical stability of metal oxide oxygen carriers over many reduction and oxidation cycles.