Carbon Dioxide Underground Storage Feasible Using 'Off-the-Shelf' Technology from Oil Industry

Despite the sobering amount of carbon dioxide needing storage to reduce greenhouse gases, funneling the offensive chemical underground remains technologically possible for the oil industry, says Dr. Steven Bryant, associate professor of petroleum and geosystems engineering at The University of Texas at Austin.

His feasibility study proving the capability and documenting the technical requirements for storing carbon dioxide underground, as well as the parallels to current processes within the oil industry, appears in the September issue of the Journal of Petroleum Technology.

"The oil industry has decades of experience moving large amounts of gas underground and above ground," Bryant said. "In fact, capturing carbon dioxide from fixed sources, such as coal-fired and gas-fired power plants, and injecting it into geological formations mimics many of the processes already undertaken to produce fossil fuels."

Few other industries deal with fluid volumes of this size, he said. The industry could respond with an 'off-the-shelf' geological-storage service in a short time—a key advantage given the urgency of the problem.

"This is not to dismiss the very real difficulty of finding and developing the financial and human resources for such an enterprise, nor of building the necessary infrastructure," he said.

Now in his fourth year of investigating the key physical processes associated with sequestering carbon dioxide, Bryant has found that injecting carbon dioxide into formations deep within the Earth's crust is one of the few technologies that can be implemented rapidly enough and at a large-enough scale to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. He directs the Geologic CO2 Storage Joint Industry Project in the Center for Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering.

Bryant's research was featured in the Special Report on Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in spring 2007. The panel highlighted his findings for the "inject low and let rise" strategy of maximizing the secure, long-term immobilization of stored carbon dioxide.

"But doing this is going to require society—industry, government, consumers—to make a tremendous investment of resources, both financial and human," he said. "This challenge motivates the current goals of our Joint Industry Project: to train a new breed of 'carbon management engineers' to design, construct, operate, optimize and regulate large-scale carbon dioxide sequestration projects, and to carry out research that makes this technology as cost-effective and routine as possible."

Nevertheless, Bryant remains realistic about the prospects for his industry to create clean air.

"The public perception of the 'fairness' of the industry's role in geologic storage may distort or even overwhelm a rational evaluation of the challenges," he noted in the report. "Although it provides more than half of the energy needed to fuel the global economy, the oil and gas industry has never garnered much public sympathy for its efforts. Ironically, being uniquely qualified to help save the planet may not improve the industry's image."

Source: University of Texas at Austin

Related stories:

Paying to save tropical forests could be a way to reduce global carbon emissions
Wealthy nations willing to collectively spend about $1 billion annually could prevent the emission of roughly half a billion metric tons of carbon dioxide per year for the next 25 years, new research suggests.
Hydrogen vehicles making impressive progress toward commercialization
A transition to hydrogen vehicles could greatly reduce U.S. oil dependence and carbon dioxide emissions, says a new congressionally mandated report from the National Research Council, but making hydrogen vehicles competitive in the automotive market will not be easy. While the development of fuel cell and hydrogen production technology over the past several years has been impressive, challenges remain. Vehicle costs are high, and the U.S. currently lacks the infrastructure to produce and widely distribute hydrogen to consumers. These obstacles could be overcome, however, with continued support for research and development and firm commitments from the automotive industry and the federal government, concluded the committee that wrote the report.
Hydrogen generation without the carbon footprint
A greener, less expensive method to produce hydrogen for fuel may eventually be possible with the help of water, solar energy and nanotube diodes that use the entire spectrum of the sun's energy, according to Penn State researchers.
Undersea volcanic rocks offer vast repository for greenhouse gas, says study
A group of scientists has used deep ocean-floor drilling and experiments to show that volcanic rocks off the West Coast and elsewhere might be used to securely imprison huge amounts of globe-warming carbon dioxide captured from power plants or other sources. In particular, they say that natural chemical reactions under 78,000 square kilometers (30,000 square miles) of ocean floor off California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia could lock in as much as 150 years of U.S. CO2 production. The findings are published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Summer Storms Could Mean More Dead Zones
(PhysOrg.com) -- It's summertime and people are flocking to the coasts around the country. But when summer storms arrive, it's not only beach-goers who are affected; the rains can also have an impact on living creatures far below the ocean surface.
'Fuel for thought' on transport sector challenges
The report: Fuel for thought – The future of transport fuels: challenges and opportunities addresses two serious issues – the need to dramatically reduce the transport sector's greenhouse gas emissions and, how to deal with the economic risks associated with increasingly costly and scarce oil supplies.
As planet swelters, are algae unlikely saviour?
As the world mulls over the conundrum of how to satisfy a seemingly endless appetite for energy and still slash greenhouse gas emissions, researchers have stumbled upon an unexpected hero: algae.
Process used by microges to make greenhouse gases uncovered
Researchers here now have a picture of a key molecule that lets microbes produce carbon dioxide and methane – the two greenhouse gases associated with global warming.

News discussion:

Technology news