News

Our CHEERS project partner Total has commissioned a new animation describing the main principles of Chemical Looping Combustion. This is a very good introduction to the technology development scope of the CHEERS project.

An updated video will be published here soon.

November 21, 2019

Today, the 10th Total China Scientific Forum (TCSF) opened in Chengdu. This is the city where the CHEERS project is based. The theme this year was “Innovative Low-carbon Energy”. The two-day gathering focused on the development of innovative technologies for the LNG industrial chain, low-carbon transportation and carbon dioxide capture, utilization and storage (CCUS). The forum serves as a platform for participants to share research results and present case studies. More than 200 experts and guests from renowned universities, research institutions, government and industry associations, well-known enterprises and innovative companies attended the forum.

Dongfang Electric Corporation (DEC), parent company of Dongfang Boiler Corporation (DBC), was invited to co-chair the event, while young scho

lars from another 2 Chinese partners Tsinghua University and Zhejiang University also presented themselves to exhibit their recent academic achievements in “Energy Future Innovation”. One of the major reasons to have such an event held in Chengdu was to better advertise the CHEERS project to the Chinese domestic market. Prof. Zhenshan LI from Tsinghua university and Dr. Mahdi YAZDANANAH from TOTAL jointly introduced the upcoming, latest progress and future prospect of the CHEERS project in the Forum, generating high interest and receiving wide rec

ognition from the audiences. A site tour to the cold mock-up model near Chengdu was also organized thereafter to some VIP guests.

“China has become one of the world’s most innovative and dynamic countries and is playing an active role in emerging energy technologies. As a flagship H2020 program undertaken in China, the CHEERS project will surely become an exciting, challenging and promising mission benefiting both European countries and China in developing affordable CCUS solutions,” says Zhonghua XU, VP, Head of TOTAL R&D Asia.

Author: Info CHEERS

Achievement of an important milestone in CHEERS project: delivery of Process Design Package, PDP

CHEERS project has reached an important milestone by delivering the Process Design Package (PDP) of the Process Demonstration Unit (PDU). This dossier provides the basic design of the PDU and fixes all of the process variables, dimensions, and conditions. Regarding the fact that CHEERS is a development project and first of its kind, development of a solid process design is key to avoid any modification and changes in the coming steps to ensure successful progress of the project.

CHEERS project process design has been developed to answer project unique requirements by proposing a wide flexibility in terms of feedstock, Oxygen Carrier materials and particularly by allowing the possibility to test two Carbon Stripper Technologies developed by CHEERS partners. Safety and environmental considerations have been important criteria in the design where a dedicated flue gas treatment section is designed and detailed HAZID study carried out to ensure process safety.

The PDP has been prepared and issued with CHEERS international collaborative way. The Process Demonstration Unit process design is the result of the effort by four CHEERS partners, IFPEN, TSINGHUA, TOTAL and DONGFANG with the support of SINTEF as leader of Oxygen Carrier material development. It is the main outcome of the Pre-FEED study (Work Package, WP2) that will be delivered to the FEED phase (WP4) led by TOTAL.

Author: Info CHEERS

CHEERS holds annual meeting at The Silesian University of Technology, Gliwice, Poland, November 4-6.

The CHEERS partner Silesian University of Technology hosted the 2019 annual meeting of the CHEERS project, bringing together researchers, technologists and experts from its nine partners. A total of 29 project participants representing four European countries and China shared their most recent results.

This EU project has high ambitions of building and operating a demonstration-scale Chemical Looping Combustion unit with 3 MW thermal capacity. The CHEERS project plan follows the pattern set by classic design, engineering and construction activities. The process starts with identification of the most effective main concepts, which are evaluated and a final concept chosen. The headline results of the design studies were confirmed in the annual meeting in Gliwice. This forms the basis of the next phase, Front End Engineering and Design (FEED), in which detailed drawings of the entire test rig, supported by the process and detailed modelling and design activities, as well as laboratory measurements of key parameters. The detailed design work will be completed together with an initial cost estimate of the constructed test rig.

There have been some surprises along the way. High expectations were placed in the initial project plan to save time and costs by retrofitting an existing circulating fluidized bed boiler unit at the location of the project partner Dongfang Boiler Group Company. Careful comparison of the retrofit case with a new, ‘grassroots’ design/build shows that the grassroots design is preferable in many practical aspects. One of these is to accommodate two solutions for a subsystem to handle three different types of solid fuels, one of these being biomass.

Author: Info CHEERS

This November, some of the members of the CHEERS consortium will co-organize the 10^th Total China Scientific forum in Chengdu, China. This year’s forum, to be held on the 19-20th November, will explore topics related to Low Carbon Energy Innovation. With a focus on Low-carbon technologies, the Forum will serve as the perfect platform for CHEERS Consortium members to share their experiences and findings on the chemical-looping CO2 capture technology currently being developed in the project.

The Total China Scientific Forum (TCSF) is an international and open innovation platform which was created by Total in China, 2009. Each year, 150-200 key stakeholders from the academic community, industry, investment funds, governments, media and other groups meet to exchange latest developments in innovation and discuss opportunities and challenges within a specific domain.

A snapshot of one of the previous Total China Scientific Forums (Credit: TOTAL)

This year, the Forum will address topics such as the future of mobility, the role of gas and carbon capture and storage. Over 150 attendees will discuss China’s CCUS roadmap and, in the context of that topic, the developments within the CHEERS project.

Participants from the CHEERS consortium will include the Dongfang Boiler Company (DBC), Tsinghua university, representatives from Total and others. The Dongfang Electric Company, the parent company of DBC, has been invited to co-organize the event. Zheijang University will also participate in the Forum.

The TCSF will enhance the visibility of the CHEERS project, both locally in China and on an international level. The audience will include representatives from academy, industry representatives and managers, investment funds, policy makers and journalists.

This summer, the members of the CHEERS consortium will be presenting their findings on a leading scientific Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology conference. The Conference will take place in Trondheim, Norway, on June 17–19 2019.

Since its inception in 2003, the bi-annual Trondheim CCS Conference has become a meeting point for leading researchers in the field of CCS. So far, over 400 experts coming from research and development institutions, universities and industry, have presented and discussed their work by participating in the Conference (click here for more information on the TCCS-10 conference). This year, these presentations will include various findings from the project partners of the CHEERS consortium.

‘’For many years we’ve been talking about CCS for CCS’s sake, which it is not. It’s about having clean energy, it’s about having a clean industry, it’s about having competitiveness and to have a decent handover of our planet to next generations’’ says Nils Rokke, the Executive Vice President of Sustainability at SINTEF.

CHEERS is a project which aims to achieve such goals by increasing the efficiency and decreasing the costs of the CLC capture technology. Finding more efficient ways of capturing CO₂ emissions from industrial sources is an important part of achieving climate goals. A more energy and cost-efficient CLC technology will also help in reconciling the competitiveness of industries both in Europe and China with their respective climate goals.

CHEERS consortium partners have submitted 6 abstracts to this years’ 10^th TCCS Conference. Along with a general overview of the CHEERS project, the consortium partners will present the developments related to several the development and demonstration of the CLC technology.

The work presented at the conference will include findings related to:

• Natural ore and novel perovskite oxygen carriers for chemical looping,
• Development of a demonstration unit by revamping an existing Circulating Fluidized Bed (CFB) pilot plant
• The mock-up experimental results of a 1.5 MW equivalent cold mock-up Chemical Looping Combustion unit.

The CHEERS (Chinese-European Emission-Reducing Solutions) project is financed by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 764697 together with the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) and Chinese industry.

From 14 to 16 November, representatives of the CHEERS project consortium gathered at the second annual meeting held in Lyon, France. The updates shared during the meeting included key results from the first project phases and new developments presented by the partners of the consortium.

A year after the project set out to improve the efficacy of CO₂ capture in industry, the project partners have achieved some promising results. The active collaboration of 9 partner organisations has resulted in a number of scientific publications, presentations at international conferences and most importantly, the design, construction and commissioning of a cold mock-up of the of the Chemical Looping Combustion technology.

The Cold Mock-Up with Representatives from the Core Design Team (representatives from Tsinghua University, IFPEN, TOTAL and Dongfang Boiler Co., picture taken at test site in Deyang)

To achieve its goal, CHEERS will test and verify a 2^nd generation chemical-looping technology, starting at laboratory scale and then as a 3MWth system prototype for demonstration in an operational environment. The construction of the final demonstration unit is planned to be finalised by March 2021.

As its name suggests, the Chinese-European Emission-Reducing Solutions project aims to develop a chemical looping capture technology that will contribute to climate change mitigation in industrial applications. Finding more efficient ways of capturing CO₂ emissions from industrial sources is an important part of achieving climate goals. Increasing capture efficiency directly reduces the energy requirements for a relevant climate change mitigation technology referred to in the newest IPCC report, carbon capture and storage. By making the technology more cost-efficient, the project will also help in reconciling the competitiveness of industries both in Europe and China with their respective climate goals.

With a budget of €16.8 million, the project is partially financed by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 764697 together with the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) and Chinese industry.

Between 24-27 September, the members of the CHEERS consortium presented the findings and progress on their research at the International Conference on Chemical Looping in Park City, Utah.

Representatives from the Tsinghua University, IFPEN, Total and SINTEF discussed their research in presentations and panel discussions held at the conference.

The presentations included their findings concerning the modelling and experimental study, the pilot plant and other knowledge and results on oxygen/carbon carrier materials, reactor concepts, potential applications and emission controls.

In total, CHEERS consortium members contributed to the Utah conference with eight presentations.

Two of the presentations were given by IFPEN and TOTAL, four by Tsinghua University and two by SINTEF.

Attendees of the conference                           Image credit: University of Utah

Panel discussion with CHEERS consortium members                                                               Image credit: University of Utah

We are excited to announce that a number of abstracts submitted have been accepted for presentation at international conferences: the 5th International Conference on Chemical Looping (ICCL) which will be held 24-27th September in Park City, Utah, USA, and the 6th International Conference on CO₂ Emission Control and Utilization (ICCU) which will be held 15-18th June in Hangzhou City, Zhejiang, China.

The ICCL is a premier international conference on chemical looping which has occurred every two years since 2010 when it was first held in Lyon, France. This year, the ICCL will meet between 24-27th September in Park City, Utah where the latest knowledge and results on oxygen/carbon carrier materials, reactor concepts, potential applications and emission controls will be presented.

Two abstracts from SINTEF, a member of the CHEERS project consortium have been accepted for presentation. The first, by Nils Erland Haugen (SINTEF) is a poster presentation on The CHEERS project: building a 3MW CLC-CCS system prototype plant for pet-coke, while the other is an oral presentation by Øyvind Langørgen (SINTEF) titled Chemical Looping Combustion of Biomass Pellets in a 150 kWth CLC Reactor.

In addition, four (4) abstracts from the Tsinghua University have been accepted for presentations at the ICCL. This includes:
(1) Oral presentation by Lei Liu from Tsinghua, titled The melting characteristics of ilmenites and manganese ores in chemical looping combustion.
(2) Oral presentation by Mao Cheng from Tsinghua, titled Coal-fired chemical-looping combustion coupled with a high efficient annular carbon stripper.
(3) Oral presentation by Ye Li from Tsinghua, titled Reaction kinetics analysis of char under conditions chemical looping with oxygen uncoupling.
(4) Oral presentation by Hu Chen from Tsinghua, titled Heat balance analysis of a 3 MWth pilot plant for CLC demonstration.

Two oral presentations will also be given at the 5th ICCL by members from IFPEN and TOTAL. Whereas Florent Guillou (IFPEN) will present on the CHEERS pilot plant, an original design dedicated to CLC efficiency, Airy Tilland (IFPEN) will present on Modelling and experimental study of a petcoke conversion with an oxygen carrier in a batch fluidized bed.

One abstract was also accepted for presentation at the 6th International Conference on CO₂ Emission Control and Utilization (ICCU) which will be held 15-18th June in Hangzhou City, Zhejiang, China. The conference will gather lead researchers, engineers and officials interested in CO₂ emission control issues to give presentations on variety of technology and policy-related topics. An oral presentation will be given by Zhenshan Li from Tsinghua University, titled CHEERS Project: Demonstration of CLC Technology in Semi-Industrial Scale via a Chinese – European Collaboration.

Following the completion of the presentations, these will be uploaded on to the CHEERS project website as part of knowledge dissemination.

Chinese-European Emission-Reducing Solutions
(CHEERS) R&D project kicks off

February 6th, 2018

The Chinese-European Emission-Reducing Solutions project (CHEERS) has now received all formal confirmations from the funding agencies. On 28 November, 30 members and representatives of the CHEERS project consortium gathered in Trondheim, Norway, to formally kick off the project. The project will, within five years, look to develop, upscale and test a 2nd generation chemical-looping technology at a scale of 3MW to produce energy and steam with captured CO₂. The aim will be to drastically reduce the efficiency drop of the CO₂ capture chain. The innovative concept is deemed capable of removing 96% of combustion-related CO₂ while eliminating capture losses to less than 4%, except for the CO₂ compression work. Thereby, the project seeks to make a major step towards large-scale carbon footprint reduction of power/steam generation system using heavy feed namely petcoke.

With a budget of €16.8 million, the project is partially financed by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 764697 together with the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) and Chinese industry. The system prototype demonstration, which is based on a fundamentally new fuel-conversion process, will be carried out at the Key Laboratory for Clean Combustion and Flue Gas Purification of the Sichuan Province, in Deyang, P.R. China.

The responsibility of the action lies with the CHEERS consortium, which comprises nine parties: SINTEF Energy Research (coordinator, Trondheim, Norway), IFP Energies nouvelles (IFPEN) (Lyon, France), Tsinghua University (Beijing, China), SINTEF Industry (Oslo, Norway), Total (France), Dongfang Boiler Group (Zigong, China), Zhejiang University (Hangzhou, China), Politeknika Slaska (Silesian University of Technology) (Gliwice, Poland), and Bellona (Brussels, Belgium).