Study on the structural evolution and heat transfer performance of Cu supported on regular morphology CeO2 in CO catalytic combustion and chemical looping combustion.

Chemical looping combustion (CLC) and catalytic combustion (CC), which are potential technologies to promote CO→CO 2 efficient conversion and energy conservation for the steelmaking off-gas, are investigated in reaction activity, structure evolution catalysts/oxygen carriers (OCs) and energy recovery using Cu/CeO 2 materials. Activity results suggest that the rod-shaped samples with well-defined (100) crystal faces exhibit higher activity than the sphere-shaped samples with (111) crystal faces, obtaining the optimized copper content of 3 wt%. IR spectra confirmed the proposed reaction pathway that the CO adsorbed on copper sites (Cu+–CO) at the Cu–Ce interface reacts with adjacent surface lattice oxygen. The gaseous oxygen continuously migrates to the external surface of materials, thus resulting in strongly exothermic CO self-sustained combustion during CC. Such a violent reaction does not cause obvious evolution of chemical composition, crystalline phase and structure. Since the active lattice oxygen is gradually consumed but not replenished by external gaseous O 2 in time, CO combustion is not self-sustained during CLC. Therefore, the reduction cycle is no longer confined to the surface of the material but penetrates deep into its body, which accelerates Cu+ enrichment at the surface and leads to irreversible sintering and agglomeration of the material. • The activity of nanorod and nanosphere Cu/CeO 2 was compared. • CLC reaction is more exergy efficiency when burning. • The reason of catalyst deactivation in CLC was investigated. • The migration of active oxygen species in CC and CLC was compared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]