Carbon capture and storage

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is about collecting carbon dioxide from large point sources in order to reduce global warming. The reduction could be up to 90% for a facility. The storage is large capacity and could take place geologically, in the oceans, or as mineral carbonates. It will increase the cost of power by 30-60 %.

Available technologies are: Post-combustion, pre-combustion, oxyfuel combustion. New methods are also envisaged.

The CO2 must be transported to storage sites by pipeline after capture. Leakage could be a concern.

The CO2 could possibly be reused as fuel or to make plastics.

Many CCS projects are under development.

See Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage

Example: Carbon-Capture Experiment in Algeria (BW 2008)

A venture by Algeria’s Sonatrach, BP and Norway’s Statoil to strip CO2 out of natural gas and store it underground could help cut emissions.

About 700 miles south of Algiers, the capital of Algeria, a monumental assemblage of pipes and cylinders rises from the bleak Sahara Desert. The plant is designed to strip out and cleanly dispose of the carbon dioxide contained in the gas produced by a network of fields below the desert floor.

The gas contains about 7% CO2. That contaminant level must be reduced to about 0.3% before it is exported to European countries. In the past energy companies vented unwanted CO2 into the atmosphere, adding to the greenhouse gas problem. But in this case the partners decided to store the carbon dioxide underground.

The Salah Gas Project is the largest so-called carbon capture and storage venture in existence.

The project will produce gas for roughly 25 years and is preventing about 800,000 tons of CO2 from going into the atmosphere annually – comparable to taking 200,000 cars off the road. It looks like a promising step in the effort to reduce CO2 emissions from one large source: the oil and gas industry.

The added cost of disposing of the CO2 is $100 million out of an overall $4 billion investment, about 2.5%.

Once the methane is purified to export-quality grade it heads north in a buried export pipeline to join the Algerian gas network. 

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One Response to “Carbon capture and storage”

  1. Thanks , I have just been looking for information about this subject for a while and yours is the best I have discovered till now. But, what concerning the conclusion? Are you positive concerning the supply?

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