May 12th, 2009
Using a sub-pilot scale
system, L.S. Fan and his colleagues are developing a chemical looping system
for converting coal into hydrogen and/or electricity while capturing carbon
dioxide for sequestration. This section of the system is where the syngas reduction phase of Fan’s process takes place.
State and national energy leaders visited
L.S. Fan, a Distinguished University
Professor and the John C. Easton Professor of Engineering in the William G. Lowrie Department of Chemical and Biomolecular
Engineering, and his students hosted a tour of his research facilities April 30
to Carl Bauer, director of the National Energy Technology Laboratory of the
U.S. Department of Energy, and Mark Shanahan, energy advisor to Gov. Ted Strickland.
The Ohio Coal Development Office, which
supports Fan’s research, arranged the tour so Bauer could see Fan’s 25 kW
Chemical Looping System, a sub-pilot scale plant that efficiently converts syngas, a product from coal gasifiers,
into hydrogen while capturing carbon dioxide. The technology can be applied to
existing pulverized coal combustion power plants without the need for major
modifications.
Fan, an internationally recognized expert
in energy and environmental reaction engineering, is working with the U.S.
Department of Energy and the Ohio Coal Development Office on a plan to
demonstrate the system next year at a Department of Energy facility in
Fan also showed Bauer and Shanahan his
patented calcination-carbonation reaction process, which
uses calcium-based sorbent to remove carbon dioxide from the coal combustion
flue gas stream.