Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, Vol.59, No.15, 7021-7032, 2020
Process Integration of Chemical Looping Water Splitting with a Sintering Plant for Iron Making
The integration potential of a chemical looping water splitting process for the sintering plant of an ironworks has been investigated. The operational conditions, the ratio of solid to gas, and the inlet temperatures of gas in the reactors were optimized with Aspen Plus V9.0 (ASPEN). A heat exchanger network was then designed based on the results of a pinch analysis, maximizing the heat recovered. The production of hydrogen (H-2) and electricity was studied when using a basic water splitting process. After this, a novel process integration scheme was developed for efficient thermal energy utilization in which energy was stored in reduced oxygen carrier particles, and the enthalpies of their oxidation reactions were utilized for heating the materials in an iron ore sintering plant. The same amount of H-2 produced and hot utility load were achieved in both processes (H-2 production = 2.93 mol/mol of natural gas (NG), hot utility = 25.3 kW at a NG input of 1 kmol/h). However, the integration scheme increased the available thermal energy in the products, and additional CO2 was saved, which was achieved by reducing the amount of coke used in the sintering plant; a 5% higher effective thermal energy efficiency and an 11% higher CO2 capture ratio were achieved. A basic economic assessment based on the fuel, products, and CO2 prices showed that the process integration has the potential to be economically beneficial, depending on future CO2 prices and capital costs. The reduction of coke consumption that was achieved should also contribute to a decrease in the NOx and SOx emissions from the sintering plant.