EGI Research "World's Largest Carbon Dioxide Source Separation Demonstration"

The Korea Institute of Energy Research (KIER) announced on the 20th that Dr. Ryu Hojung's research team and the Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) Power Research Institute have jointly developed world-class chemical looping combustion technology, established the world's largest 3MWth-class pilot plant, and conducted continuous demonstration for 300 hours.

Demonstration plant for media circulation combustion. Provided by Korea Institute of Energy Research

As a result, the carbon dioxide separation and emission performance recorded over 96%, surpassing the previous world-best level of 94%.

In particular, alongside the successful demonstration, KIER also opened the possibility of commercializing this technology. This was achieved by successfully producing steam necessary for power generation using chemical looping combustion technology for the first time in the world. Although advanced countries such as the European Union, China, and the United States are also demonstrating chemical looping combustion technology, according to KIER, no country has yet succeeded in actual steam production.

Chemical looping combustion technology differs from conventional technology where fuel directly reacts with air; instead, it supplies pure oxygen to the fuel through oxygen-carrying particles. These particles, after losing oxygen, come into contact with air again to absorb oxygen and repeat the process of supplying it to the fuel.

This technology is more efficient at smaller demonstration scales but suffers from high heat loss, making steam production impossible. When scaling up, it is difficult to maintain high efficiency and produce steam.

Provided by Korea Institute of Energy Research

On the other hand, KIER developed process design and operation technology that maintains high efficiency with low heat loss even when scaling up, as well as mass production technology for oxygen-carrying particles, enabling steam production. This marks a significant step forward from the realm of promising future technology to commercialization.

Economic analysis of chemical looping combustion technology predicts an annual operating profit of 14.4 billion KRW and about a 4% increase in power generation efficiency compared to existing 100MW-class natural gas power plants. Above all, by reducing carbon dioxide capture costs by 30% compared to existing methods and enabling the capture of over 150,000 tons of CO2 annually, KIER expects this technology to contribute to the nation's carbon neutrality goals.

Dr. Ryu Hojung, lead researcher, stated, “To achieve national carbon neutrality, it is necessary to establish and operate gas power plants applying new technologies such as chemical looping combustion. KIER will continue to develop and demonstrate the technologies developed so far to accelerate the commercialization of next-generation power generation technologies.”

Meanwhile, this research was conducted through the Gas Power and Steam Production Facility Combustion CO2 Capture and Utilization Technology Development Project supported by the Korea Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning (KETEP) under the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.