Mature versus emerging technologies for CO2 capture in power plants: Key open issues in post-combustion amine scrubbing and in chemical looping combustion

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) have acquired an increasing importance in the debate on global warming as a mean to decrease the environmental impact of energy conversion technologies, by capturing the CO2 produced from the use of fossil fuels in electricity generation and industrial processes. In this respect, post-combustion systems have received great attention as a possible near-term CO2 capture technology that can be retrofitted to existing power plants. This capture technology is, however, energy-intensive and results in large equipment sizes because of the large volumes of the flue gas to be treated. To cope with the demerits of other CCS technologies, the chemical looping combustion (CLC) process has been recently considered as a solution for CO2 separation. It is typically referred to as a technology without energy penalty. Indeed, in CLC the fuel and the combustion air are never mixed and the gases from the oxidation of the fuel (i.e., CO2 and H2O) leave the system as a separate stream and can be separated by condensation of H2O without any loss of energy. The key issue for the CLC process is to find a suitable oxygen carrier, which provides the fuel with the activated oxygen needed for combustion. The aim of this work is to explore the feasibility of using perovskites as oxygen carriers in CLC and to consider the possible advantages with respect to the scrubbing process with amines, a mature post-combustion technology for CO2 separation.