Calcium-looping reforming of methane realizes in situ CO utilization with improved energy efficiency.

Closing the anthropogenic carbon cycle is one important strategy to combat climate change, and requires the chemistry to effectively combine CO capture with its conversion. Here, we propose a novel in situ CO utilization concept, calcium-looping reforming of methane, to realize the capture and conversion of CO in one integrated chemical process. This process couples the calcium-looping CO capture and the CH dry reforming reactions in the CaO-Ni bifunctional sorbent-catalyst, where the CO captured by CaO is reduced in situ by CH to CO, a reaction catalyzed by catalyzed by the adjacent metallic Ni. The process coupling scheme exhibits excellent decarbonation kinetics by exploiting Le Chatelier's principle to shift reaction equilibrium through continuous conversion of CO, and results in an energy consumption 22% lower than that of conventional CH dry reforming for CO utilization. The proposed CO utilization concept offers a promising option to recycle carbon directly at large CO stationary sources in an energy-efficient manner.