Performance assessment of novel nanofibrous Fe₂O₃/Al₂O₃ oxygen carriers for chemical looping combustion of gaseous fuel

Chemical looping combustion (CLC) is a promising combustion technology due to its low-energy penalty and the ability for 100% CO2 capture. CLC at nanoscale is emerging as a favorable option for the gas-fired power plants in recent times because of the inherent advantages of the nanostructured oxygen carriers (OCs). However, the cyclic stability at high transition metal oxide loadings of OCs is crucial in the successful adoption of this technology. At high temperatures, severe sintering is a major concern for these nanostructured OCs. In this work, Fe2O3/Al2O3 (60:40) composite nanostructured OCs with fibrous morphology are synthesized using electrospinning technique. These synthesized OCs are tested for their redox cyclic stability at 900 degrees C under CLC atmosphere with CO as fuel in tubular fixed-bed reactor. The morphological changes of these OCs are evaluated after 10 and 20 redox cycles. The analysis of the characterization results revealed that the synthesized nanofibrous OCs even with high transition metal oxide loading exhibited remarkable sintering resistance compared to the composite nanoparticles under similar conditions.