This is interesting and pretty exciting:
… the Department of Energy has finally brought a large-scale integrated demonstration project online. Capture and storage operations recently kicked off at Air Products and Chemicals’ Port Arthur project in Texas’ Gulf Coast, DOE confirmed this week. The $430 million industrial capture retrofit onto a hydrogen production facility owned by Valero Energy Corp. is officially the first project in DOE’s CCS demonstration portfolio to begin full-scale operations, according to the Department.
Capture at the hydrogen facility’s second steam methane reformer is expected to begin in April, and the two units together are expected to capture roughly one million metric tonnes of CO2 annually, ultimately helping produce up to three million additional barrels of oil annually for Denbury, according to DOE. The Department allocated $284 million in stimulus funding to the project.
I googled to get a notion about what a 1 million metric tonnes savings would scale too. According to This aashe.org page ” 4.6 million metric tons of CO2 […] the same as the annual energy use of 422,542 homes”. So, that would mean 1 million tons is the CO2 generated by approximately 91,900. homes. The retrofit to achieve the CO2 capture cost $430 million which comes out to about $4700 per household. (Bear in mind: this is a first deployment of a demonstration. Costs for such things tend to be much higher than for future commercial systems.)
Port Arthur is the first of eight CCS projects within DOE’s demonstration portfolio to move into the operations phase. In a release, the Department touted the project for demonstrating the commercial viability of carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) via enhanced oil recovery. “This milestone is significant because now we can start looking back at things like timelines and construction costs and begin to understand how those particular data points might apply to future CCUS endeavors,†Michael Knaggs, director of the National Energy Technology Laboratory’s Office of Major Demonstrations, said in an interview this week. “We can also start collecting actual operations information to see what it’s actually costing to capture and deliver the CO2.â€
The Port Arthur project starting operations first is indicative of a larger trend in the CCS industry that has seen industrial capture projects come online far before power generation efforts. All of the CO2 used in the world’s first carbon storage projects, including Statoil’s Sleipner, Dakota Gasification’s Great Plains synfuels plant and BP’s In Salah, originated from gas processing facilities. Given that many industrial processes require CO2 to be separated in order to properly operate anyway, adding transport and storage components to the back end are often far cheaper and easier than starting a power generation capture facility from scratch. In the case of the U.S., permitting is also easier for industrial projects in some cases since most processes already separate the CO2.
On the other hand, commercializing CO2 capture for industrial operations is seen as particularly critical in the eyes of organizations like the International Energy Agency. While power generators can choose to pursue other lower-carbon options for generating electricity instead of CCS to meet emissions reduction goals, CO2 capture is considered the only path currently available for reducing emissions from industrial operations. IEA estimates that in order to limit the effects of climate change to a manageable level, 82 industrial capture projects must be in operation by 2020. But in its most recent technology report, IEA finds that while that goal is technically feasible, current investment patterns are “woefully off pace.â€
I tend to think that some controversies over climate change will calm down a bit as engineers develop and deploy systems that permit CO2 reductions while maintaining industrial capacity. While I have nothing in particular against the concept of using wind and solar, they aren’t particularly suited toward industry. In contrast, CSS could potentially help out– provided it can be deployed economically and effectively.
For more visit ghgnews.com.
Hat tip @Roddy_Campbell
Please change the headline to read “CCS” instead of “CSS”.
Also, a link to the article quoted in the first graf would be helpful.
Nit pick: CCS rather than CSS., in headline and last paragraph.
Unless CSS stands for Carbon Snagging and Storage. 🙂
Fixed. Thanks.
Don B. I kind of like Carbon Snagging and Storage! 🙂
But if the CO2 is used to produce an additional 3 million barrels of oil, then that puts downward pressure on oil prices which could increase CO2 emissions. Unexpected consequences hide everywhere. 😉
There is nothing wrong with CCS, it is just expensive and not so widely applicable. The $430 million is only the investment cost; unless there is a good use for the captured CO2 (like enhanced oil recovery) there would be operating costs for CCS as well.
SteveF
Conservation also exerts a downward price encouraging people to make new uses.
Presumably there will be operating costs. We also don’t know how long a plant lasts– so $430 million for a plant with a how many year life cycle? The article doesn’t say.
The article mentions that in this particular use capturing the CO2 had a additional use for the process but that doesn’t hold all industrial processes.
The cost issue would then be: Which method or mix of methods for reducing net CO2 and other important emissions are most cost effective? Wind or Solar? CCS? Nuclear and so on. I’m interested in this because it’s another option. Unlike wind it’s not going to suck up more land. It might be more politically feasible than Nuclear.
At .43 metric tons of CO2 per barrel of oil, the oil will produce 1.29 million metric tons of CO2 (excluding energy to produce the CO2 and oil).
CO2 capture in various forms of differing efficiency has been around for many decades. This is the CC of CCS
But the S, ie. storage of captured CO2, is not even mentioned here. Put bluntly, the “S” is the Achilles Heel of CCS
Consider the volume of generated and captured CO2 over a large enough geographical area like the US, consider the transport cost of this volume across this large area to wherever it will be stored, then consider the time scale over which this system will be needed
Until a cost-efficient, large scale transport system and effective sealing method(s) are demonstrated, I remain of the view that CCS is economic bulltish. Of course I welcome answers, but no arm waving please
the two units together are expected to capture roughly one million metric tonnes of CO2 annually, ultimately helping produce up to three million additional barrels of oil annually for Denbury, according to DOE.
It’s part of a capture and re-injection scheme of a CO2-flood, enhanced oil recovery program for Denbury’s oil pools. The CO2 is cycled, to what you read about for cumulative CO2 capture is the same gas over and over again.
The operating costs of capture, transport and reinjection have to be put into the extra oil recovery, plus of course the amortized facility cost AND facility deconstruction cost, although the project will probably be used for multiple pools. However, plants still wear out, but the equivalent replacement costs will be found in maintenance.
“CCS” has been used once again when it is not actually storage. At some time in the future the CO2 will be used elsewhere. It is hard to imagine when the CO2 will not be circulating into and out of the ground, with some surface loss happening each time.
Watch the thimble.
“industrial capture retrofit onto a hydrogen production facility”
Let’s see…I’m guessing we have a hydrogen production facility that is stripping the carbon in natural gas to produce hydrogen so the carbon capture costs are in no way, shape or form the same costs we would have trying to capture carbon coming out of a coal fired electricity plant.
Harrywr2– That’s what I think, yes.
Doug proctor– I’d assumed that some of the CO2 was going to end up below ground as a result of use. If the CO2 just whooshes back out then this would be useless. Do you have any descriptions of how the system works?
ianl8888– I’m pretty sure transport is irrelevant for this application. It would be an issue for other ones. I don’t think they are proposing storing all carbon generated. They are merely proposing capturing at those facilities where it is easily captured and (presumably) storing in a nearby geographic location.
Re: harrywr2 (Jan 25 18:31),
If you gasify coal to produce hydrogen to burn in your power plant, you get a nearly pure stream of CO2 from the shift reactor, just like a hydrogen from natural gas plant. Usually people don’t do that, though. The make town gas, hydrogen and carbon monoxide, and burn that. And, of course, with the current price of natural gas compared to coal, I doubt anyone is building gasifiers for power plants any more. Retrofitting an existing coal plant would be quite expensive, but the stack gas is something like 20% CO2 so capture is a lot easier than trying to pull it out of the atmosphere.
SteveF
I’d have a look at Joule Unlimited’s (http://joulefuels.com/) process before saying there’s no use for captured CO2. Growing up to 20,000 litres an acre annually (non agricultural land) of Diesel or Ethanol at as low as $0.17 a litre in a continuous process using nothing more than waste water, industrial CO2 and sunlight seems like a good use, perhaps that’s why big players like AUDI have bought into the company.
There is a 3+ million ton/year CCS facility under construction in Australia. It will capture waste CO2 from an LNG plant.
http://ghgnews.com/index.cfm/australian-official-gorgon-ccs-project-on-track-to-start-injecting-in-2015/
I’ve understand why CO2 is injected into the ground for oil recovery but I can’t for the life of me see how storing CO2 in the ground as CO2 makes any sense at all. First of all CO2 is reactive with things like water and minerals. It will likely slowly turn into carbonate rock. In fact Mother Nature has been playing this trick for eons. Stand on the edge of the Grand Canyon and you can see 700 million years worth of CO2 sequestration. It’s time to put away the high pressure pumps and simply do a little aqueous chemistry and just try to accelerate a natural process.
Sean (Comment #108977)
January 26th, 2013 at 8:28 am
“I can’t for the life of me see how storing CO2 in the ground as CO2 makes any sense at all.”
I can’t either…CO2 to methanol might make sense in a constrained petroleum scenario.
http://www.chemicals-technology.com/projects/george-olah-renewable-methanol-plant-iceland/
Gras Albert,
The site in rich in glossy publicity and poor in technical detail. Let’s just say I am a bit skeptical about the described process being economically viable. In any case, the potential carbon emissions are reduced by only half (or less!) compared to just burning gasoline or diesel, since all that captured carbon ends up as co2 in the air. I would be cautious about investing if I were you.
Sean
I think CO2 turning into carbonate rock is a desired feature. That would keep it out of the atmosphere where it causes warming.
If possible, that might form the basis for a method. The only issue is cost relative to other methods. I have no idea what the costs might be. But if it could be done cheaply, having a sizable fraction of CO2 turned into carbonate rock right at the source where the CO2 is created would fall under the category of “solution”.
SteveF
A glance at the parent companies web site, (http://www.jouleunlimited.com/) might allay your concerns, along with multiple patents, the board contains a number of serious players, they have already raised $100m in private capital and they are currently commissioning the first proof of concept industrial sized plant. Most importantly, they turned down my money more than 12 months ago, apparently 5 & 6 figure investors are too small!
I also suggest you’ve missed the point, Joule’s process is CO2 neutral, could entirely replace fossil fuel use for transport and do so utilising existing infrastructure for distribution and consumption, all at a fraction of the cost of ‘renewable’ alternatives and without using arable land or clean water.
Take another look, WSJ (http://tinyurl.com/68n46u2)
Here is another angle being pursued.
CO2 to Concrete
It’s hard to be pessimistic with the increasing prospect of low climate sensitivity, a bridge fuel (fracked methane) online and growing and rapidly advancing technology fueled by cheap gas and intellectual property rights.
Re: Howard (Jan 26 14:35),
An important step in the process is the electrochemical synthesis of sodium hydroxide. That takes a lot of energy. It’s usually done in association with making chlorine, something lots of greens don’t like either. You don’t make concrete from CO2, you make it by cooking the CO2 from calcium carbonate to make lime. The lime then reacts with silica from sand to make calcium silicate. Concrete does absorb CO2 from the air, as the biosphere fiasco proved. Poor planning on their part as this was something that should have been obvious.
Re: Gras Albert (Jan 26 14:05),
I seriously doubt those numbers. I haven’t bothered to run the numbers to see what photosynthetic efficiency that works out too, but I’d bet that it’s unreasonably high.
Bioreactors often don’t scale up easily. Look at the cellulosic ethanol fiasco. Unless you displace corn based ethanol and require E15, which can’t be used in about 1/3 of the cars on the road today, there’s no market for it, so it’s fortunate that no commercial scale plants are operational.
The main issue with CCS is that CO2 molecules are large and tend to lock up any reservoir that they are injected into. Oil/gas reservoirs are generally sufficiently permeable that CO2 injection can (sometimes) work but most places do not have the combination of dedicated CO2 gathering systems, pipelines and suitable reservoirs.
With only a few exceptions its another non solution
DeWitt:
I agree with your criticisms, however, it’s hard to predict when and where breakthrough occur. That said, it seems to me that most of the large grants given to new technology companies go to firms that are better at getting grant than commercializing technology.
@Lucia #108957
Your quote:
“…(presumably) storing in a nearby geographic location”
Sorry, but the “presumably” is an evasion I have heard oh so many times, along with “nearby location”. Such a location has to be geologically suitable, not merely geographically close
My point is that the article did not mention the S in CCs
Until this is addressed in credible detail, I will remain unexcited. Non-geologists can become as excited as they wish to
My problem with this project is shown in the following quote:
First, the US in 2011 emitted about 6,016 million tonnes of CO2 … so this plant is collecting some 0.017% of the US CO2. It is not attempting the difficult task of separating CO2 from combustion products. Instead they are getting it from a steam reformer. As a result, it doesn’t seem possible to scale this up to anything significant.
Next, they are injecting the CO2 into the ground to bring up more oil. Eventually, of course, most or all of the CO2 will return to the surface. So the “S” in the title really should stand for “Speculative”, since they are speculating that it might stay stored. Some is recycled
Here’s the kicker. Let’s be real kind and assume that the CO2 will never escape from the ground. They’ve sequestered 1 million tonnes of CO2, presumably from natural gas. They inject that into declining oil fields to produce 3 million barrels of oil. We’ll assume it stays there.
And when the three million extra barrels of oil from the CO2 injection are burned, it will add 1,275,000 tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere …
So looking at the process from end to end, they’ve captured 1 million tonnes of CO2 from an industrial process, and used it to produce 1.275 million tonnes of atmospheric CO2 … be still, my leaping heart …
Nor is this atypical. The Weyburn project in Saskatchewan will inject 18 million tonnes of CO2, recover 130 million bbls of oil from the injection, and when that extra oil is burned, put 55 million tonnes of CO2 into the air. 18 million tonnes of CO2 injected into the ground, 55 million tonnes of CO2 emitted to the atmosphere … this is a gain?
This is supposed to be “interesting and exciting”? I’m sure it thrills the oil companies, because they are getting a subsidized supply of CO2 for secondary oil recovery … but should I really get excited that we’re subsidizing an oil company?
w.
DeWitt 109009: We monitor CO2 in a fairly new building with exposed concrete floors, columns and ceilings. Late at night, when the building is empty, the CO2 concentration consistently falls below the outside air even though there is still lots of fresh air being pumped into the building. Not too many plants inside…
Will there be a subsidy or compensation for living near the stores of captured CO2 in light of the risk of a Lake Nyos scenario? Not that anything could go wrong….
Old Jed Clampett out one day shooting where there used to be some crude and up from the ground, a cloud of death ensued…. CO2 that is,
…not as catchy.
Sounds like a grossly inefficient, subsidy-sucking, insider-rewarding approach. Where do I sign up?!! All we need is a CCS credits exchange to reward other insiders for fictitious emissions savings. What could go wrong..?
Willis Eschenbach:
I think the idea isn’t to reduce the total amount of CO2 coming out but to reduce the amount of CO2 produced for a given amount of oil. After all, humans are going to want to use all the oil we can.
Comparing the amount of CO2 sequestered to the amount of CO2 released like this is basically just saying, “The process is worse for emissions than just leaving oil in the ground.” That’s kind of a given.
That’s the goal as I see it. If the net mount of CO2 produced is 0.275 where as it previously was 1.275, that’s a net reduction in emissions.
The issues are then:
1) Is there a real net reduction. (Some above has suggested no; others yes.)
2) What’s the cost of getting any net reduction. If it’s too high… well… drat!
3) How widely can this be used– and at what cost. Maybe due to the need to transport, it’s low cost in a tiny number of limited circumstances where CO2 can be sequestered locally but not in any other general cases.
The same sort of questions arise in any technology. I don’t happen to know the answers here– but I find it interesting this is being implemented.
lucia:
That’s the one I’m most interested in. I’d hope the people behind projects like this would have a decent idea how much of that CO2 will come back out. Without that information it’s pretty much impossible to judge the value of this approach.
Someone mentioned limestone deposits. These are not from CO2 turning into limestone on its own but the result of photosynthesis giving organisms energy to create shells/capsules (e.g., foraminifera) which sink to the bottom of the sea and make thick deposits. Turning CO2 into any type of rock takes energy–it is endothermic. You are reversing the combustion process. To burn a fossil fuel and then take energy and sequester the carbon is to promote perpetual motion–at best if the fossil fuel bonds are double bonds (high energy) you might consume only half of the energy from burning by your sequestering activity and THEN you need to transport it somewhere. Concrete is not a CO2 absorption tool–it takes a huge amount of energy to make concrete and the process gives off huge amounts of CO2. If you sequester the gas, you have a huge transportation problem. Few power plants are located right where suitable geologic deposits exist. Only in the case of using the CO2 to push more oil out of the ground does it make any kind of economic sense. Notice that I didn’t use the word “crazy”!
Re: lucia (Jan 28 13:30),
I doubt that anyone actually cares whether there’s a net reduction in CO2 unless there’s some sort of government subsidy based on said reduction. What they really care about is whether the production cost of a barrel of oil is below the current price, which seems to be heading up again. If it gets to ~$150/bbl again, the global economy could be in trouble. As long as oil is denominated in US dollars, the Chinese for one, could care less about the price because they have trillions squirreled away.
The real problem would be transportation. We don’t have the pipelines in place to really take advantage of shale gas in large quantity. We certainly don’t have pipeline capacity to ship CO2. Shipping by rail might work since CO2 is a liquid under moderate pressure and temperature. Unfortunately, the critical temperature for CO2 is only 31.1C.
Response to Craig Loehle on CO2 and carbonate formation.
Limestone formation is certainly associated with living organisms but it does form naturally in some places in the oceans. This link goes through some of the processes: http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=kt167nb66r&chunk.id=d2_9_ch20&toc.id=ch20&brand=eschol
The formation of Calcium and magnesium carbonates from dissolved salts in water and CO2 does not involve any oxidation reduction reactions. It’s all ionic chemistry. It is hard to form in cold water because calcium or magnesium bicarbonate will keep it in solution. When the water warms up, entropy favors release of the CO2 from the bicarbonate and calcium carbonate can form. Calcium carbonate is actually less soluble in warm water than cold because of bicarbonate, Ca(HCO3)2 keeps it in solution.
Sean, if you think the temperature/solubility relationship of CaCO3 is odd, take a look at the pressure/solubility curve
http://eciencia.urjc.es/bitstream/10115/6052/1/REPOSITORIO%20ANGEL.pdf
If you form a grain of CaCO3 in the warm, saline surface waters, it can fall down, enter cool waters getting bigger by accretion of more CaCO3, and then the pressure kicks in and it begins to solublize.
On top of that the surface is more alkali than the first 1000 meters.
Sean (Comment #109184),
Yes, and coral atolls grow vertically because of this. On a grander scale, the Bahamas banks are a couple of Km deep, and pretty much solid CaCO3 precipitated out of ocean water over many millions of years. The sand around many Bahamian islands consists of ooids (http://geology.utah.gov/utahgeo/rockmineral/collecting/oolitic.htm) that form as smooth, nearly spherical CaCO3 particles, starting from a tiny grain of CaCO3 (usually from parrot fish droppings), due to regular supersaturation of the warm water in CaCO3. When people say corals will not be able to form CaCO3 shells if CO2 increases, they probably don’t understand just how supersaturated in CaCO3 the tropical ocean is in most places.
In the short term, the proposed injection of captured CO2 to liberate petroleum may seem to reduce net emissions, especially if other petroleum would not have been burned had the enhanced recovery petroleum not been available. But in the real world, other petroleum probably would have been burned… though maybe at a little higher price. In the long term, anything that allows more total petroleum to be pumped and burned means higher total cumulative emissions, unless more than a ton of carbon in the form of CO2 has to be injected to recover 1 ton of carbon in the from of petroleum. (And assuming that the injected CO2 says undergrounds for a very long time… millennia or more). So, enhanced recovery with captured CO2 would seem, in the long run, to lead to higher total CO2 emissions, not lower.
.
This of course ignores any short term economic and geopolitical benefits from not buying oil from somewhere else, which may be more important than the impact on CO2 emissions.
SteveF, each calcium ion in granite that goes into river water or directly into an ocean mineralizes one CO2 molecule.
Pulverize some Scottish Islands.
“Pulverize some Scottish Islands.”
Well, that’s the idea that WUWT mocked.
But calcium ions alone won’t do it. You need a base to neutralize the CO2. Calcium chloride solution won’t absorb CO2. Olivine is basic enough – maybe granite too.
As far as the source of calcium ions, bases to neutralize the CO2 and the like, mother nature provides solutions. From what I understand, the northern hemisphere oceans have a lot more calcium and magnesium ions dissolved in them due water running off the continents through rivers than the southern oceans. (With the amount of land under tillage now, there is likely much more minerals in the rivers than there was in the past.) There is also more than one way to “neutralize” CO2, it can be incorporated in aquatic plants and anyone who has swam or snorkled off the California coast can attest a lot of kelp growing rapidly just off the shoreline. So ocean circulation picks up minerals from the rivers as currents travel along the coasts, CO2 is added in the cold northern waters where it can be tied up as a bicarbonate with alkaline earths, some of the CO2 can be removed biologically by kelp and other sea grasses and in the warm water tropics deposit calcium carbonate in warm shallow seas. I suspect agriculture is adding more mineral matter to the oceans and fossil fuel combustion is adding more CO2 to the atmosphere and the oceans, so is all that is necessary a few seed crystals to increase the rate of limestone removal in the tropics?