The global warming challenge is one of the greatest innovation opportunities going forward. One strategy is to re-invent combustion from scratch to promote more efficient CO2 capture. A very promising such solution is Chemical Looping Combustion (CLC).

The Cheers project is developing Chemical Looping Combustion (CLC) to the next level. CLC is an energy production technology leveraging inherent, built-in, CO2 capture. This reduces the need for investment in dedicated CO2 separation from low-concentration flue gases. It also reduces operational costs because it uses less energy in its inherent CO2 separation process.

Designing a full-scale CLC plant is still a work in progress. The current fleet of CLC test rigs are made and used for basic research and development. These are now ready to be scaled up to dimensions suitable for commercial application.

The CHEERS project has produced the design basis of a 3 MWth demonstration CLC facility with systems that will allow researchers to understand how to make it even better in the next version. This design basis is now being converted to a Front End Engineering and Design (FEED) by a world-renowned engineering contractor. This will be announced in a post coming soon.

The animation below shows how the system works, and what makes CLC a great candidate for re-inventing combustion.

CHEERS acknowledges generous support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 764697 and the China MOST program.