Application of chemical looping combustion for solar thermal energy storage

Abstract

In this paper a solar hybrid chemical looping combustion (CLC) system for solar thermal energy storage (TES) is proposed. For those combinations of fuels and metal oxides in CLC systems with an endothermic reaction, there is a potential to utilize solar thermal energy to drive the CLC reactions and so to allow the solar thermal energy to be stored as a reduced metal oxide. The application of oxygen carrier particles for solar thermal energy storage is also possible. A novel solar hybrid system is proposed and assessed, in generation cycles to enable base load generation from solar thermal energy. For this purpose three reservoirs are added to a CLC system to store the oxygen carrier particles and a cavity solar reactor is used as the fuel reactor. The ASPEN PLUS software is used to simulate the hybrid process. Basic validation of the model is performed using independent simulation result reported previously and the model is then used to calculate operating temperature, solar efficiency and solar fraction of the system. The results identify potential benefits from the solar hybridization of a CLC system.