Progress

Year 2023 (November-December)

• Today (16th of November in 2023) I start to work for the project. 

• We used some microalgae in a granulator setup to granulate the algae on the 11th of December, and we got some granulates. 

• The granulation process has now been optimised, and 88% of the granulates from the optimal procedure is between 0.2 to 1 mm, which is suitable for tests in a batch reactor and an 1.5 kW pilot (18th of December).

Year 2024

• Char from the microalgae was made from a fast pyrolysis process in a fludized bed reactor, and will be used for charaterizations. (11th of January 2024)

• Some nice char was obtained through the fast pyrolysis but it seems they are homogenous and we are making other attempts. (11th of January 2024)

• First video about the project is open to public through this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNIj_Z1zZSg&t=9s (23rd of January 2024)

• We started some first microalgae-CLG tests in a batch fluidized bed reactor (the same one used for char preparation) on Jan-30, but experienced various agglomerations- very hard agglomeration and hard agglomeration. (30th of January and 8th of February 2024)

• We solved the agglomeration problem during another test and on the same day we received plenty of oxygen carriers from Chalmers (thanks to Calle and Tobias) and will be enough for use in experiments in the 1.5 kW pilot unit! (23rd of February 2024)

• Submitted an Abstract to the 12th International Freiberg Conference on Circular Carbon Technologies that will take place from 23–27 September 2024 in Shanghai, China. (23rd of March 2024)

• The last shot of 2 grams microalgae granulates marks the complete of preliminary oxygen carrier selection in the batch fluidized reactor (7th of May 2024)

• Dr. Daofeng Mei presented the project's primary results on the 2024 edition of Carbon Caputure Science and Technology (CCST2024) Conference (21st of July 2024)

• The project got significant data for the study of reactivity of fast-char gasification with TGA experiments in reacting conditions suitable for CLG process (2nd of August 2024)

• Daofeng presented an oral presentation and disseminated the batch-reactor results on the 12th International Freiberg Conference on Circular Carbon Technologies on the 23-26th of September in Shanghai. (26th of September 2024)

• First experiements with the 1.5 k unit (25th of October 2024)

• And we couldn´t get through with the microlagae feeding (blockage in the fuel feeder) and found leakages from the reactors (December 2024)

Year 2025

• Leak problems are fixed (24th of March 2025)

• Daofeng Mei presented the kinetics results of fast microalgae char gasification at the 25th International Conference on Fluidized Bed Conversion (FBC25) on April 6-10 and chaired one conference session ( 10th of April 2025)

• Daofeng Mei completes his secondment at UPNA and starts LCA analysis of the CLG process with microalgae (15th of May 2025)

• We tried new ways of microalgae pretreatment, but still has many problems with the fuel feeding, and there are bed agglomerations (28th of May 2025)

• Daofeng particiapted and disseminated preliminary results of the project at the 33rd European Biomass Conference & Exhibition on June 8-12, Valencia, 2025 (10th of June 2025)

• More microalgae pretreatments will be tried and we will start new tests soon (23th of June 2025)

• Process simulation model for CLG with microalgae and LD slag is made with Aspen Plus software and sensitivity analyses are made considering different reacting conditions (5th of August 2025)

• A suitable method for microalgae pretreatment is found and the microalgae can be fed smoothly to the 1.5 kW pilot (21st of August 2025)

• The experimental campagin with the 1.5 kW for oxygen carrier selection for microalage CLG is successfully completed (31st of October 2025)

• Experimental campaign of microalgae-CLG with the 50 kW has been started, ilmenite will be used as a reference material to carry out experiments (5th of November 2025)