Carbon Capture and Storage Demonstration By CO2CRC

The CO2CRC Ltd (CO2CRC) is a collaboration of Australian and international researchers from government, industry, and leading academic institutions. CO2CRC has been playing a pioneering role in field testing of carbon capture and storage since 2004 with over 8 capture demonstration plants and a SOA storage and monitoring facility of its own under their belt. The main objective is to demonstrate and achieve technology development and to make CCS cost effective. CO2CRC is a world-leading Australian CCS R&D organisation with a goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by undertaking industry relevant carbon capture, storage & utilisation research.

Various capture technologies were tested and demonstrated using real flue gas and syngas from Australian coal fired power plants. This put Australia on the world map at the forefront of testing carbon capture technology, at that time frame (Qader, 2009). Learning by doing has been main motive all along, however, at the same time, one technology climbed up the TRL ladder towards commercial readiness (Smith et al., 2016). CO2CRC is now opening up another new front in field testing - in CO₂ capture from natural gas. The testing is targeted for the benefit of carbon capture for offshore high pressure NG separation.  Emphasis will be on long term exposure under high pressure and impurities removal (durability and robustness). If successful, it is expected to save huge CO₂ compression cost for CCS.

The CO2CRC’s own storage research site is located in the Otway Basin of Victoria, Australia. Its Otway Project is Australia’s first CO₂ storage demonstration project that has been underway since late 2004 and is undertaking scientific assessments of the evaluation of a storage site as well as the design, injection, storage, and monitoring of CO₂ operations (Cook, 2014).

So far, over 80,000 tonnes of CO₂ rich gas were injected into the formation under different projects. Various monitoring devices and techniques are in place confirming/verifying model parameters of underground CO₂ plume movement after injection and the checks and balances of CO₂ both underground and aboveground (Jenkins, et al., 2012). Current Stage 3 Project will involve the injection of ~15,000 – 40,000 tonnes of CO₂ rich gas, via the newly drilled CRC-3 well, into the Paaratte Formation at ~1500 mSS. Under this project, CO2CRC and its partners are investigating fit-for-purpose characterisation, subsurface monitoring and storage management. This includes an investment of ~AUD $42 million for new facilities, injection operations and associated R&D to develop a suite of validated technologies and methodologies directly applicable to industry. In addition, two existing wells, and a range of other monitoring facilities will be utilised in this project. It will allow for significant reductions in the cost of long-term monitoring of CO₂ while at the same time providing reassurances to regulators and communities of the permanent containment within the storage site (Jenkins, et al., 2016).

This presentation would contain the summary results of the test facilities to show the extent of learning. It also provides a critical assessment of the technologies whether they meet the expectations in the field and if pilot demonstration unveiled new understandings.

References

1.     Qader, A., 2009. Demonstrating Carbon Capture. The Chemical Engineer (tce) pp. 30-31, November.

2.     Smith, K., Harkin, T., Mumford, K., Kentish, S. E., Qader, A., Anderson, C., Hooper, B. and Stevens, G. W., 2016, ‘Outcomes from pilot plant trials of precipitating potassium carbonate solvent absorption for CO₂ capture from a brown coal fired power station in Australia’, Fuel Processing Technology, in press.

3.     Cook, P. J. (Ed.), 2014, Geologically Storing Carbon, Learning from the Otway Project Experience, CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne.

4.     Jenkins, C., Cook, P., Ennis-King, J., Underschultz, J., Boreham, C., de Caritat, P., Dance, T., Etheridge, D., Hortle, A., Freifeld, B., Kirste, D., Paterson, L., Pevzner, R., Schacht, U., Sharma, S., Stalker, L. and Urosevic, M., 2012, Safe storage and effective monitoring of CO2 in depleted gas fields.Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the USA, vol. 109 (2), pp. 353-354.

5.     Jenkins, C., Marshall, S., Dance, T., Ennis-King, J., Glubokovskikh, S., Gurevich, B., La Force, T., Paterson, L., Pevzne, R., Tenthorey, E. and Watson, M., Validating subsurface monitoring as an alternative option to surface M&V - The CO2CRC’s Otway Stage 3 injection, 13th International Conference on Greenhouse Gas Control Technologies, GHGT-13, 14-18 November 2016, Lausanne, Switzerland