Effect of MgO on characterizations and mechanical properties of red soil as oxygen carrier in chemical looping combustion

Abstract

Red soil is a type of soil that rich in iron and abundantly can be found in Malaysia. However, the application of red soil is limited to agriculture, building blocks, road building and waste water treatment. Chemical looping combustion (CLC) is one of the carbon-capturing technology, in which oxygen from oxygen carrier reacts with fuel inside fuel reactor to produce pure CO2 and H2O. In this research, effect of MgO as supported material was investigated in order to produce desired oxygen carrier from red soil. The composition of 95:05, 90:10, 80:20 and 70:30 of red soil and MgO, respectively, was varied in this research. The phase analysis, morphology, surface area and pore volume size were investigated using X-ray, Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FESEM) and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) analysis, respectively. From this study, composition of 90:10 of red soil and MgO, respectively, was found to have high surface area which is 56.95 m2/g with pore volume size of 0.145 cm3/g, and has low crystallite size which favourable as oxygen carrier.