Instituto de Carboquímica (ICB) is a part of the Agencia Estatal Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), which is the largest public institution dedicated to research in Spain and the third largest in Europe. The Combustion and Gasification research group at ICB is composed of about 20 researchers including staff, students and technicians. The group has a long expertise in gas-solid reaction kinetics and modelling applied to fluidized bed combustion and gasification processes as well as on Chemical Looping processes. Since 2000 the group has worked in the development, testing and characterization of oxygen carriers suitable for gaseous, liquid and solid fuels CLC, Chemical-looping reforming (CLR), indirect gasification of biomass and Chemical-looping with oxygen uncoupling (CLOU) of solid fuels. Five members of the group have been in the Highly Cited Research list of Clarivate Analytics, during the last 4 years.
ICB-CSIC currently has five Chemical-looping units for gaseous/solid/liquid fuels (G/S/L): 500W (G), 10 kW(G), 900 W(L), 500 W(S), 50 kW (S) that have been totally in operation with fuel for > 1500h using > 15 oxygen carriers. ICB-CSIC has > 180 publications in CLC, of which > 95 in SCI journals and 8 are PhD theses. They have participated in several EU projects related with CLC: GRACE (FP6), CLC GAS POWER (FP6), CACHET (FP6), UNIQUE (FP7), ÉCLAIR, ACCLAIM (RFCS), INNOCUOUS (FP7), SUCCESS (FP7) and other Spanish research projects. I. Carboquimica (CSIC) has worked in the CLC process to transfer the concept from laboratory to prototype scale carrying out a demonstration of the technology. Main achievements have been:
- Development of oxygen carrier materials based on Cu, Fe and Ni suitable for the process,
- Demonstration of the process concept at 10 kWth continuous CLC for 200 h working with Cu-based oxygen carriers; 1000 h in a 500 Wth facility with Cu, Fe and Ni based oxygen carriers; 200 h in a 50 Kw unit with ilmenite and iron ore with different coals.
- Modelling of CLC for several gaseous and solid fuels (CH4, syngas, coal, etc.),
- Development of the Cu materials with high oxygen generation capability suitable for solid fuel CLOU process,
- First demonstration demonstration of the CLOU technology for coal and biomass combustion in a 1 kWth continuous CLC plant.