One-step fabricated Zr-supported, CaO-based pellets via graphite-moulding method for regenerable CO₂ capture

Calcium looping (CaL) belongs to a promising high-temperature CO₂ capture technology because of adopting cheap and extensive source CaO-based sorbents. However, CaO-based sorbents are prone to occur the issues of sintering and elutriation in the fluidized-bed reactors. To further enhance the practicability, the Zr-supported, CaO-based sorbent pellets were produced using the graphite-moulding method. Different synthesis modes (i.e., sol-gel, hydration-mixing, and wet-mixing) were compared for preparing CaO-based composite slurry before pelletization. Sol-gel is the promising synthesis mode to prepare Zr-supported, CaO-based pellets with outstanding CO₂ capture performance due to achieving a more uniform distribution of inert CaZrO₃ spacer. Moreover, the Zr-based stabilizer content within sorbent pellets produced by the combined method of sol-gel and graphite-moulding was further studied. The higher content of Zr-based stabilizer promotes the enhancement of cyclic stability and mechanical strength of Zr-supported, CaO-based pellets. After 17 cycles, the sorbent pellets containing 20 wt% of Zr-based stabilizer display a high CaO carbonation conversion of 74.1 %. Moreover, CaO-based pellets with 20 wt% of Zr-based stabilizer possess a higher compression strength of 4.84 ± 1.08 MPa, which is as high as 1.8 times that of the pellets with 5 wt% of Zr-based stabilizer.