Chemical Looping Combustion

Chemical looping combustion, or CLC, is a combustion technology built around a dual fluidized-bed system in which a metal oxide, rather than atmospheric air, supplies the oxygen needed for combustion. In the fuel reactor the metal oxide releases its oxygen to burn the fuel and is itself chemically reduced; the reduced metal then moves to a separate air reactor, where it is re-oxidized before returning to the fuel reactor to begin the cycle again. Because the fuel is never mixed directly with air, chemical looping combustion avoids forming nitrogen oxide pollutants, and the process yields two separate exhaust streams, one of mostly atmospheric gases with very little carbon dioxide, the other of mostly carbon dioxide and water vapor; simply condensing the water vapor out of that second stream yields nearly pure carbon dioxide, allowing efficient carbon capture without the energy penalty that conventional capture methods carry.