Application of Attrition-Resistant Materials for Novel Clean Energy Technologies

At RTI’s Energy Technology Division, we are developing cleaner energy solutions, a number of which utilize fluidized bed reactors (FBR) at their core. RTI has been developing process-specific fluidizable materials for a variety of technology applications including coal gasification, biomass conversion, CO2 capture and utilization, and syngas cleanup and conversion. We have developed significant expertise in designing highly attrition-resistant particles while imparting chemical reactivity and scaled up the manufacturing up to 100 ton scales. This presentation will share our experience and expertise in developing attrition-resistant sorbents for two applications: a) high-temperature syngas desulfurization, and b) CO2 capture from coal-derived flue gas. The ZnO sorbent employed for high-temperature desulfurization process is inherently a hard material and the critical research challenge was to optimize the balance between reactivity (lowering hardness) and attrition resistance. On the contrary, the PEI-based CO2 sorbents are supported on fluidizable silica support shells which are soft. RTI has addressed this limitation by designing a process that minimizes attrition.