Enhancement of CO2 capture in limestone and dolomite granular beds by high intensity sound waves

Abstract

The calcium looping (CaL) process, based on the calcination/carbonation of CaCO3 at high temperatures, has emerged in the last years as a potentially low cost technology for CO2 capture. In this work, we show that the application of high intensity sound waves to granular beds of limestone and dolomite in a CaL reactor enhances significantly their multicycle CO2 capture capacity. Sound waves are applied either during the calcination stage of each CaL cycle or in the carbonation stage. The effect of sound is to intensify the transfer of heat, mass and momentum and is more marked when sound is applied during calcination by promoting CaO regeneration. The application of sound would allow reducing the calcination temperature thereby mitigating the decay of capture capacity with the number of cycles and reducing the energy penalty of the technology.