Formic acid synthesis – a case study of CO ₂ utilization from coal direct chemical looping combustion power plant

Abstract

Chemical looping combustion (CLC) is an encouraging technology for hydrogen and power co-generation with efficient CO2 capture. Utilization of the captured CO2 is a much more important task to realize negative CO2 emissions. The objective of the work is to explore a case study of carbon dioxide utilization (CDU) in the form of formic acid synthesis using the captured CO2 and co-generated H2 from coal direct chemical looping (CDCL) power plant. Steady-state simulations are performed on the power and H2 co-generation CDCL plant integrated with formic acid synthesis and presented a comparison of overall performance of the CDCL plants with and without CDU integration. The simulation results revealed that the formic acid synthesis integrated CDCL plant avoids release of 62.49 kg.CO2/GJ of fuel input into the environment and utilizes the captured CO2 completely with the net electrical efficiency penalty of 5.8%.