Chapter 7: Alternative Materials for Chemical Looping Applications

Chemical looping is a novel and flexible technology with many practical applications ranging from energy conversion to fuel and chemical production. Although formidable technical challenges arise from the complexity of the process, chemical looping offers an elegant route to breakdown a complex reaction conducted under specific reaction conditions into different sets of sub-reactions conducted separately and under different conditions. The linkage between the sub-reactions is maintained via a solid intermediate. One of the main advantages of chemical looping is the flexibility of the looping material. While many of the looping processes are based upon the use of oxygen carriers, the use of non-oxidic looping materials as sources of activated reactants confers to the process high flexibility and adaptability for fuels and chemical production compared to classical processes. However, the use of non-conventional looping materials is not well developed yet. Beyond the use of oxides, this chapter examines the use of nitrides as nitrogen chemical looping materials for ammonia production. The main physicochemical properties of potential nitrogen carriers and their application in ammonia generation will be discussed.