Coal Chemical Looping Gasification for Syngas Generation Using an Iron-Based Oxygen Carrier

The chemical-looping gasification (CLG) of coal is a clean and effective technology for syngas generation. Sharing principles with chemical-looping combustion (CLC), CLG also uses oxygen carriers to transfer lattice oxygen to the fuel. Investigations into CLG with different O/C ratios are carried out in a fluidized bed reactor with steam used as the gasification–fluidization medium. The effect of the active component content of the oxygen carrier on the gas selectivity is performed, and reaction mechanisms between the Fe2O3 oxygen carrier and coal with steam as the gasification agent are discussed. Moreover, we also assessed the reactivity of the CaO-decorated iron-based oxygen carrier particles in multicycle reactions. The carbon conversion efficiency is increased from 55.74 to 81% with increasing O/C ratio, whereas the content of H2 first decreases and then increases. The addition of CaO can increase the carbon conversion efficiency and the gasification rate substantially and reduce the generation rate of H2S from 1.89 × 10–3 to 0.156 × 10–3 min–1. Furthermore, X-ray diffraction (XRD) images indicate that the CaO-decorated iron-based oxygen carrier particles were completely regenerated after six redox cycles. Finally, the peak fitting of gasification reaction rate curves is used to explore the reaction mechanism between coal char and the CaO-decorated iron-based oxygen carrier, indicating that the reactions in the CLG include three stages: the complex reactions involved an oxygen carrier, coal char, and steam; the gasification of coal char; and the reduction of Fe3O4 to FeO. The two-segment modified random pore model (MRPM) fits the experiment data well.