ETZ Zürich published a scientific publication about SFERA-III in the April 2020 issue of the international journal Reaction Chemistry & Engineering. The paper is available in open access.
Abstract
The efficient production and separation of oxygen is essential for numerous energy-intensive industrial applications in the fuel and mineral processing sectors. A thermochemical redox cycle is considered for separating oxygen from atmospheric air and other gas mixtures using solar or waste process heat. Based on electronic structure (DFT) computations Y0.5Ba0.5CoO3−δ is selected as a redox material, which surpasses the redox performance of state-of-the-art Cu2O. The thermochemical oxygen production is experimentally demonstrated by applying a temperature/pressure swing between 573 K at 0.2 bar O2 and 873 K at 1 bar O2. An energy balance shows the feasibility of using process waste heat from the solar thermochemical CO2/H2O splitting cycle and the potential to compete vis-a-vis with cryogenic distillation. Exploratory runs with a packed-bed reactor indicate the potential of both thermochemical oxygen production and separation for scale-up and industrial implementation.
Reference
High redox performance of Y 0.5 Ba 0.5 CoO 3−δ for thermochemical oxygen production and separation
Author(s): M. Ezbiri, A. Reinhart, B. Huber, K. M. Allen, A. Steinfeld, B. Bulfin, R. Michalsky
Published in: Reaction Chemistry & Engineering, Issue 5/4, 2020, Page(s) 685-695, ISSN 2058-9883
DOI: 10.1039/c9re00430k
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 823802