text: Calcium looping technology offers several technical advantages over amine scrubbing for carbon capture. Firstly, both carbonator and calciner can use fluidized bed technology, due to the good gas-solid contacting and uniform bed temperature. Fluidized bed technology has already been demonstrated at large scale: large (460MWe) atmospheric and pressurized systems exist, and there is not a need for intensive scaling up as there is for the solvent scrubbing towers used in amine scrubbing.
  Also, the calcium looping process is energy efficient.  The heat required for the endothermic calcination of CaCO and the heat required to raise the temperature of fresh limestone from ambient temperature, can be provided by in-situ oxy-fired combustion of fuel in the calciner.  Although additional energy is required to separate O from N, the majority of the energy input can be recovered because the carbonator reaction is exothermic and CO from the calciner can be used to power a steam cycle. A solid purge heat exchanger can also be utilized to recover energy from the deactivated CaO and coal ashes from the calciner. As a result, a relatively small efficiency penalty is imposed on the power process, where the efficiency penalty refers to the power losses for CO compression, air separation and steam generation. It is estimated at 6-8 % points, compared to 9.5-12.5 % from post combustion amine capture.
  The main shortcoming of Ca-looping technology is the decreased reactivity of CaO through multiple calcination-carbonation cycles. This can be attributed to sintering and the permanent closure of small pores during carbonation.