A high performance oxygen storage material for chemical looping processes with CO₂ capture

Chemical looping combustion (CLC) is a novel combustion technology that involves cyclic reduction and oxidation of oxygen storage materials to provide oxygen for the combustion of fuels to CO₂ and H₂O, whilst giving a pure stream of CO₂ suitable for sequestration or utilisation. Here, we report a method for preparing of oxygen storage materials from layered double hydroxides (LDHs) precursors and demonstrate their applications in the CLC process. The LDHs precursor enables homogeneous mixing of elements at the molecular level, giving a high degree of dispersion and high-loading of active metal oxide in the support after calcination. Using a Cu-Al LDH precursor as a prototype, we demonstrate that rational design of oxygen storage materials by material chemistry significantly improved the reactivity and stability in the high temperature redox cycles. We discovered that the presence of sodium-containing species were effective in inhibiting the formation of copper aluminates (CuAl₂O₄ or CuAlO ₂) and stabilising the copper phase in an amorphous support over multiple redox cycles. A representative nanostructured Cu-based oxygen storage material derived from the LDH precursor showed stable gaseous O₂ release capacity (∼5 wt%), stable oxygen storage capacity (∼12 wt%), and stable reaction rates during reversible phase changes between CuO-Cu ₂O-Cu at high temperatures (800-1000 °C). We anticipate that the strategy can be extended to manufacture a variety of metal oxide composites for applications in novel high temperature looping cycles for clean energy production and CO₂ capture.