Chemical Looping for CO2 Conversion and Utilization—Recent Advances and Perspective

A massive increase in the emissions of CO2 is contributing to global warming and negatively impacting Earth’s ecosystems. To achieve CO2 removal or carbon neutrality, significant development of CO2 conversion and utilization technologies is needed. Chemical looping is an emerging clean energy technology with inherent CO2 separation. It involves the reaction and regeneration of solid materials termed as looping carriers. In recent years, the novel chemical looping processes and looping carriers were proposed, aiming at CO2 utilization as a partial substitute for hydrocarbon feedstock or a soft oxidant for looping carrier regeneration. This article describes the advances on this subject with a focus on the fundamentals of CO2 conversion during the redox reactions. It is expected that these new advances will accelerate the large-scale deployment of CO2 utilization technologies.