A challenge in the chemical looping hydrogen generation (CLHG) process is the thermal sintering of oxygen carriers. To address this issue, making the CLHG operate at moderate temperatures is a feasible approach. In this paper, we propose the plasma-assisted CLHG for producing hydrogen at moderate temperatures (300–500 ^oC) and investigated the effects of discharge input power, weight hourly space velocity, and temperatures on the performance. It has been demonstrated that plasma promotes the process of adsorption and desorption on surfaces of oxygen carriers. As confirmed by characterizations, plasma deepens the reduction from Fe₂O₃→Fe₃O₄ to Fe₂O₃→Fe and no spinel phase (FeAl₂O₄) is detected after 10 cycles. As a result, the plasma-assisted CLHG led to outstanding hydrogen production performance with the highest average hydrogen generation rate of ~0.29 mmol·g-1·min-1 at 400 °C. This process has comparable performance to the non-plasma assisted CLHG process at 900 °C. The plasma promotion effect on CLHG may be extended to improve the performance of chemical looping in other applications.

Chemical looping; Plasma;,Hydrogen generation,Moderate temperature