Investigation of a calcium looping-concentrated solar power integrated process

The integration of a Calcium Looping (CaL) cycle with a Concentrated Solar Power system can represent an important climate¬-change mitigation technology. In this work, the solar CaL process has been experimentally investigated by the use of a solar Fluidized Bed (FB) reactor. Three short arc Xe lamps of 4 kWel each, coupled with elliptical reflectors, were used as solar simulator obtaining a peak flux of nearly 3000 kW m–2. Several calcination carbonation tests were carried out on a commercial limestone sample, to evaluate the sorbent performances in terms of CO2 capture capacity increasing the number of cycles. Results show that, for the limestone sorbent at hand, the higher temperatures obtained on the FB surface do not produce a severe worsening of the reactive material properties, thus encouraging the research on the solar-driven CaL process.