When carbon capture and storage (CCS) was identified as an essential technology in the battle against global warming this month by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change this month, the political rhetoric stepped up a gear.
Despite the importance of the technology, development of CCS has been stultifyingly slow. Last decade saw an initial surge in interest in CCS, which seemingly promised a way for power generators to continue burning fossil fuels without causing climate change. Governments around the world were eager to publicise ambitious R&D programs for CCS and clean coal. But when the recession started in 2008, funding for projects was almost universally slashed. Witness the faltering Futuregen in the U.S., show stopping problems in Barendrecht, Holland, or limp British attempts in Peterhead, Scotland.
Most existing projects are therefore small demonstrators of carbon capture plant only. Although CO2 injection is used commercially for enhanced oil recovery (EOR), few projects have considered how and where long term deep geological storage of CO2 will be achieved. Only a handful, notably Sleipner in Norway and In Salah in Algeria, have successfully stored CO2 underground.
Furthermore, there are only a few projects planned within the next few years that aim to demonstrate a fully integrated, end-to-end, large scale carbon - capture - storage process.
CCS then, remains mostly academic. However, the fully integrated CCS projects dotted around the world promise to lead the way. Perhaps with the renewed political rhetoric and sufficient industrial backing this globally important technology can gain the imperative it needs to become fully developed and commercialised before the imperative becomes obvious necessity.
1. Boundary Dam / Aquistore, Canada
When it injects its first CO2 in July this project in Saskatchewan, will become the first in the world to demonstrate the entire chain of carbon capture and storage for power generation.
The CO2 will be captured and piped from energy company Saskpower’s 800MW Boundary Dam coal power station. The anime-based capture system at Boundary Dam will provide 3000 tonnes of CO2 a day. Initially 2000 tonnes a day will be injected into the Aquistore well, the remainder will be sold and used for enhanced oil recovery.
Work on the project started in September 2011. Two wells have been drilled, one for injection and one for observation, at a cost of $17m. The 3.4km injection well is the deepest ever drilled in Saskatchewan.
The Aquistore will act as “buffer storage” for Saskpower’s commercial EOR activity. Rik Chalaturnyk, chair of Reservoir Geomechanics at the University of Alberta and member of Aquistore’s scientific and engineering research committee, says: “The biggest value for carbon capture and storage research is that this will turn on and off at different rates. There is enough instrumentation to provide valuable information on the dynamics and transition in the well that will be useful for commercial scale operations.”
2. Gorgon, Australia
Work on the Gorgon project in started in 2009. When injection starts next year at Barrow Island, 60km off the coast of north west Australia, it will become the world’s largest carbon sequestration project.
Engineers plan to inject around 3.4 Megatonnes (Mt) of CO2 a year 2.4km underground, through shale which will act as the seal, into a reservoir called the Dupuy Formation. The gas will come from the Greater Gorgon fields, piped onshore and processed on Barrow Island. Nine injection wells are being built and four pressure management wells.
The carbon capture and storage part of the project is estimated to cost $2bn and involves Chevron Australia as the major industrial partner (57%), alongside Shell (25%) and Exxonmobil (25%). Overall Gorgon is one of the biggest natural gas projects in the world. It aims to exploit the Greater Gorgon Fields, which contain around 40 trillion cubic feet of gas, and will see the construction of a three-train liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility on Barrow Island that will produce 15.6 million metric tons of LNG per year plus a domestic natural gas plant and pipelines.
At the beginning of this year, Chevron Australia said that the project was 76% complete, but also confirmed that the initial estimated cost of $37 billion has increased to $52 billion.
3. Quest, Canada
This project in Alberta will become the first CCS facility for an oil sands operation when it injects the first CO2 next year. Shell, the owner, designer, builder and operator of the project, bills Quest as “commercial-scale”.
Quest will capture and store 1.1 Mt of carbon dioxide which is produced as a byproduct from bitumen processing at Shell’s Scotford Upgrader, near Edmonton. It will reduce emissions from the upgrader by 35%. After capture, the CO2 will be transported via 80km of pipeline to three injection wells, where it will be injected into an aquifer more than two kilometres underground. Three deep monitoring wells and four groundwater monitoring wells are also be drilled. Corrosive-resistant casing and cement is being used for the wells, which will be monitored during and after operation. When injection finishes, a closure period, estimated at around 10 years by experts, will take place before the wells are plugged and abandoned.
Shell has licenced not just the area where CO2 will be contained but where the pressure exerted by that CO2 will have effect. Owain Tucker, global deployment leader for CCS and contaminated gas for Shell, says: “We’ve licensed a huge site that includes our pressure footprint in the Quest project. The challenge is to understand the pressure footprint, understand the brine migration, and understand and protect your groundwater resources.”
“Shell has a long history of working with CO2. We can do it. Quest and Gorgon are about to start injecting. It takes effort and time, but essentially it is achievable.”
4. Illinois Industrial Carbon Capture and Storage Project, U.S.
This project has retrofitted an biofuel ethanol plant in Decatur, Illinois with carbon capture equipment. The plant is operational and currently captures 1000 tonnes of CO2 a day, transports it 1.5km by pipeline and injects it 1.6km into a deep saline formation.
The project is the first large-scale integrated CCS demonstration project to be operational that is part funded by the U.S. Government. It is licensed to store up to a million tonnes of CO2. After a million tonnes is injected the site will be assessed for its long term suitability and a second phase for long term commercial CO2 storage will begin.
The major industrial partners in the $208 million project are engineering firms Schlumberger and the Archer Daniels Midland Company. In March this year it was announced the project was three quarters complete. Todd Werpy, vice president of research for ADM, says: “We have injected 750,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide — which otherwise would have been released into the atmosphere — safely underground. Just as importantly, we have gathered data that will allow us to move forward with the even more ambitious Illinois Industrial Carbon Capture and Storage project, which will have the capability to store a million tons of CO2 every year.”
5. ROAD, Holland
Rotterdam is playing host to this €1.2 billion (US $1.6 billion) carbon capture and storage project, which will be the the first large scale, fully integrated project to inject CO2 into a depleted gas field next year when it is commissioned.
The Rotterdam Opslag and Afvang Demonstratie (ROAD) project involves power companies E.ON, Electrabel, GDF Suez and engineering supplier Alstom. Part-funded by the EU and Dutch Government, the project will capture CO2 post-combustion from the new 1100MW Maasvlakte C coal and biomass-fired power plant and transport it 25km offshore to the P18-A platform in the North Sea. As long as first injection occurs as planned next year. The CO2 will be stored at a depth of more than 3.5km under the seabed where there is an estimated capacity of 35 million tonnes.