US: Kill CO2 by burying it
How can we get kill off the carbon dioxide that’s spewing into the atmosphere thanks to fossil fuels? The US Department of Energy (DOE) wants to bury it deep underground … without having to worry about zombie emissions rising back up into the air.
The department today announced 15 projects it will fund to help achieve that goal. It plans to throw $21.3 million at these carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) projects over the next three years.
According to the agency’s Carbon Sequestration Atlas, the US and Canada have enough used oil and gas reservoirs, deep saline formations and other underground geological sites to store more than 3,500 billion metric tonnes of carbon dioxide. That’s more than 1,100 years’ worth of carbon emissions buried safely away.
The 15 university and private-sector projects being funded by the agency will explore ways to use such underground storage without risking leakage back into the atmosphere. They include:
- Advanced Resources International of Virginia, which will study carbon dioxide storage capacity in selected Eastern gas shales.
- Leland Stanford Junior University of California, whose researchers will focus on depleted shale gas reservoirs.
- Clemson University of South Carolina, whose scientists will study wellbore deformations.
- Colorado School of Mines, which is focused on developing more realistic predictions for storage capacity and leakage risk.
- Fusion Petroleum Technologies of Texas, whose researchers will study the factors affecting the successful characterisation, engineering design and operation of a saline formation site.
- Montana State University, where researchers will work to develop a technology for sealing preferential flow pathways around injection wells.
- New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, whose researchers will the effect of different underground rock interfaces on carbon dioxide storage and transport.
- Paulsson Inc. of California, which will work to deveop a reservoir-assessment tool.
- Columbia University of New York, whose researchers will study carbon dioxide transport in a basaltic storage reservoir.
- Indiana University, which will focus on flow modals and trapping mechanisms.
- University of Kansas Center for Research, where researchers will work to evaluate the effectiveness of a seismic tool for assessing reservoirs and features.
- University of Texas at Austin, which will focus on new models for plume migration in a reservoir. A second project will study the concept of assessing capillary trapping in reservoirs.
- University of Wyoming, whose researchers will study carbon dioxide storage in deep saline formations.
- Yale University, where researcher will study the chemical and mechanical processes that must occur in basalt reservoirs for carbonation to be practical on a large scale.
