Kinetics of plasma assisted chemical looping of hydrocarbon fuels with metal oxides

To enable carbon capture and storage, there is a significant interest in investigating plasma enhanced chemical looping using metal oxide particles to accelerate the oxidation of hydrocarbons and separate CO2. In this presentation, chemical kinetic insights into the reactions of non-equilibrium plasma interaction of hydrocarbons with metal oxides such as CuO, NiO, MgO, and CaO are investigated through using time-dependent electron ionization molecular beam mass spectrometry (EI-MBMS) technique and reactive molecular dynamics simulations. The results show that plasma could reduce CuO and NiO particles with hydrocarbons at temperatures nearly 200°C lower than that without plasma. In addition, it is shown that at elevated temperature, plasma can enhance CaCO3 decomposition at lower temperature and that CaO can accelerate fuel oxidation while MgO does not. The results reveal that plasma is a promising technique to enhance Chemical-Looping Combustion (CLC) to enable low carbon energy conversion and to develop efficient energy conversion technologies.