Power Generation Based on Chemical Looping Combustion: Will It Qualify To Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Life-Cycle Assessment?

The aim of this study is to disclose the relationship between the global warming impact (GWI) of chemical looping combustion (CLC) and four essential factors to investigate the environmental sustainability of this technology, namely, the types of oxygen carrier (OC), the lifetime of the OC, the global warming potential (GWP) of the OC, and thermodynamic performances of the CLC power facility. At designed conditions, the GWI of the CLC power plant is expected to be 63.4 kg of CO2 eq/(MW h) by using a Ni-based OC. The lifetime of the OC has a major influence on the GWI before it reaches 4000 h, and a further increment of OC lifetime presents a tender influence on reducing the GWI, whereas, at such a condition, the GWP of the OC presents obvious influences. A higher CLC system efficiency contributes to lower GWI; thus, integrating CLC with a more efficient combined cycle rather than the steam cycle and screening high-temperature resistance OCs should be focused on for future research needs.