Ilmenite: A promising oxygen carrier for the scale-up of chemical looping

To tackle the scale-up of Chemical Looping Processes, the production of efficient and affordable oxygen carriers
appears of paramount importance. Ilmenite is an ore-derived oxygen carrier which can be considered surely
abundant and cheap. The preparation and the characterization of its reactivity are presented in the following
paper. The paper describes briefly the performance of ilmenite relating it to other oxygen carriers, its thermo-
dynamic properties, the kinetics and its use with fuels (solid, liquid and gaseous, including biofuels). Key features
for an oxygen carrier are represented by costs and environmental sustainability, oxygen transport capacity and
reactivity, as well as specific issues related to its use in fluidized bed reactors, namely agglomeration and attrition
behavior. In addition, information about mutual interaction with fuel, considering also the influence of impu-
rities, coke deposition or its effect on the gasification rate of solid fuels, is reported.