A promising step toward wider commercialization of carbon capture and storage
Battelle and its partners have successfully concluded a nearly 20-year CCUS pilot project associated with the Midwest Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership
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There are those who say carbon capture and storage is the climate technology of the future. And there are those who add “and always will be.” Although projects like burying carbon dioxide under the North Sea or building "mechanical tree farms" that pluck CO2 out of the atmosphere sound exciting, reading research papers about the amount of money needed and overcoming the technical challenges to make the technology work within an urgent timeframe is sometimes disheartening.
That’s why I was excited to read the news that Battelle and its team of partners have successfully concluded a 20-year carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) pilot project associated with the Midwest Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (MRCSP), paving the way forward for wider commercial deployment.
Battelle led the MRCSP in three phases, starting with the initial characterization phase in 2003, moving to multiple small-scale pilot tests in the validation phase in 2005, and culminating in the large-scale development phase starting in 2008.
Dr. Neeraj Gupta, MRCSP principal investigator and Battelle's technical director for Carbon Management, said in a press statement:
"We are so pleased to have completed this work. We met all our objectives and stored more than two million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) in three phases, effectively and safely. Now, the focus moves to commercialization and expanded regional initiatives, especially focused on the storage/sequestration portion of the climate change mitigation approach. The lessons learned from MRCSP research are now being applied to a number of commercial projects."
A comprehensive series of MRCSP reports have now been approved by the United States Department of Energy (DOE) and can be downloaded from the announcements page of the newly formed Midwest Regional Carbon Initiative (MRCI). These include a Final Technical Report, topical reports on characterization, modeling, monitoring, life-cycle assessment, and regional scale-up for the large-scale test in Michigan. Also included are a series of topical reports on selected regional assessments in the 10-state MRCSP region. In addition, the MRCSP team has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings to facilitate knowledge sharing.
The MRCSP work has been funded primarily by the U.S. DOE's Fossil Energy program through the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), with significant co-funding from the Ohio Coal Development Office in the Ohio Department of Development, Core Energy's in-kind contributions, and numerous other partners. The MRCSP was a collaboration of nearly 40 government, industry, and university partners joined to assess the technical potential, economic viability, and public acceptability of CCUS for the DOE.
The field research was performed on the oilfield sites owned and operated by Core Energy. Core Energy currently operates the only CO2 Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) projects in Michigan and the only commercial EOR project east of the Mississippi using anthropogenic or captured CO2. Said Bob Mannes, president of Core Energy:
"We were proud to collaborate with Battelle, the NETL, and the other MRCSP stakeholders on this very practical and foundational research. The operational expertise of the Core Energy team was vital to this field demonstration proving the safe and secure injection of more than two million tons of CO2 in Michigan. This characterization work will be foundational to commercial projects in the future as it demonstrates that Michigan has the capacity to safely store hundreds of years of carbon emissions."
In transitioning to the next phase of CCUS development, the MRCSP program has evolved into the MRCI, led by Battelle and the Illinois State Geological Survey. The MRCI aims to advance CCUS research by addressing key technical challenges, obtaining and sharing data to support CCUS, facilitating regional infrastructure planning, and performing regional technology transfer. The MRCI study region covers 20 states in the Midwest and Northeast United States and includes collaboration with the state geological surveys, industry, and universities across the region.
In a related development, in May, ADM, the world’s top agricultural origination and processing company, and the University of Illinois announced the successful completion of the first-of-its-kind Illinois Basin – Decatur Project (IBDP), a carbon capture and storage (CCS) project designed to evaluate and test the technology at commercial scale. This is one of two CCS projects located adjacent to ADM’s corn processing plant in Decatur, Illinois. The goal was to confirm the ability of the Mt. Simon Sandstone to accept and store one million metric tons of carbon dioxide over a period of three years, the equivalent of annual emissions from about 1.2 million passenger cars according to EPA calculations. Working together through the MGSC, the Illinois State Geological Survey at the University of Illinois designed, implemented, and monitored the project and ADM was the host and operator.
Like much of the rest of the industrialized world, the American Midwest is part of the ongoing major energy transition, which includes continued reliance on fossil fuel energy, but with a sharply increasing natural gas use and deployment of new energy technologies. Most experts believe successful use of CCUS for the disposition of CO2 is essential to achieving deep decarbonization goals by mid-century. In a perfect world, these future projects will also offer a major employment opportunity for people currently engaged in oil and gas-related industries.
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Midwest Regional Carbon Initiative
Battelle-led Team Successfully Completes Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage Research
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