Last
week, carbon capture and storage became one of the many new
entries to the Oxford English Dictionary. But some may wonder how
long it’s going to take until we have mastered CCS technology.

The
fact is that we’re continually making great progress on bringing these new
technologies to the marketplace. Just last week, the Department
of Energy blogged about its continued partnership with the private sector
in developing viable CCS technologies to deploy:

The Department of Energy’s ARPA-E program
realizes that developing economically competitive CCS technologies is critical
to enabling the use of our vast domestic coal resources without emitting CO2
into the atmosphere. To this end, ARPA-E has funded 16 projects through the Innovative
Materials and Process for Advanced Carbon Capture Technologies (IMPACCT)
program, which focuses on technologies that capture CO2 from
existing coal-fired power plants. This program has been designed to accelerate
the most promising ideas in basic research toward large-scale
demonstrations. 

In
this edition of The Coal Wire, we showcase some of the investments being made
by the public and private sectors into the research, development and deployment
of carbon capture and storage:

The
Associated Press – Basin Electric Project Still Seeking CO2 Customers
(8/19): “Basin
Electric Power Cooperative is searching for customers to buy the carbon dioxide
it plans to retain in an experiment to reduce emissions of the gas from its
Antelope Valley power plant, a company official said … One crucial element is
whether Basin can find customers for the carbon dioxide that would be captured
from one of Antelope Valley’s two 450-megawatt generating units, he said. A
potential buyer is the oil industry, which uses carbon dioxide to increase
production in some geologic formations … Great Plains processes lignite coal to
make synthetic natural gas and retains much of the carbon dioxide in the
process. It ships the gas by pipeline to southern Saskatchewan, where oil
producers pump it underground to increase oil production. The plant retains
about 3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually … Carbon dioxide that
cannot be sold could be pumped underground into saltwater aquifers in western
North Dakota for permanent storage. One large aquifer is beneath the Freedom
lignite coal mine, eight miles northwest of Beulah, which supplies coal to the
synfuels plant and Antelope Valley station.”

Steamboat
Today of Steamboat Springs, Colo. – Carbon Sequestration Project Wraps
First Phase Near Craig (8/20): “After three months of scouring the area
surrounding Craig, a team of nine geologists have finished preliminary data
gathering to determine if the area would be suitable for carbon sequestration.
Carbon sequestration is the process by which carbon dioxide emissions from
power plants and other sources are captured and injected into the ground … The
three-year research project is being done to see if sandstone reservoir rock
formations thousands of feet underground would be able to hold captured carbon
dioxide.”

R&D
Magazine – New Approaches To Meet The Carbon-Capture Challenge (8/17): “Researchers at the
Georgia Institute of Technology are using funding from the Advanced Research
Projects Agency – Energy – also known as ARPA-E – to pursue two different, but
related, approaches for removing carbon dioxide from the flue gases of
coal-burning power plants. Power plants produce approximately one-third of all
carbon dioxide emitted in the United States each year.  The researchers
will attempt to use the unique high-density properties of hollow fibers to
develop cost-effective techniques for removing large volumes of the greenhouse
gas from the emissions. In one project, awarded directly to Georgia Tech,
researchers are developing hollow-fiber composite membranes that will use
nanoporous metal-organic framework materials to separate carbon dioxide from
the flue gases.  In the other project, Georgia Tech researchers are
assisting colleagues at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in developing hollow-fiber
sorbents that will soak up carbon dioxide like a sponge – then release it when
heated.”

The
Associated Press – Grant Helps Fund Wyo. Univ. CO2 Storage Research (8/18):
“University
of Wyoming researchers have received a $1.5 million federal grant to study how
much carbon dioxide can be permanently stored underground. UW’s project was one
of 15 nationwide to receive money from the U.S. Energy Department for studying
various facets of carbon capture and migration in different types of geologic
formations … The hope is that the research will help the U.S. reduce emissions
of greenhouse gas as well as develop and deploy near-zero-emission coal
technologies.”