Public Release: 13-Feb-2019
Carbon gas storage cavern is the best way to obtain clean energy from a fossil fuel
The Research Center for Gas Innovation is developing technology to separate CO2 and methane in oil and gas exploration and store it in offshore salt caverns
Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo
A set of technologies that is expected to have its first results four years from now is designed to resolve one of the world’s greatest oil and gas exploration challenges today: carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) emission in the atmosphere.
The innovation, the result of a patent deposited in 2018, consists of injecting the CO2 and CH4 that comes from wells during oil extraction into salt caverns as a way to reduce the amount of carbon gas in the emissions.
The first “pilot cavern” may be ready by 2022 and is the result of studies carried out at the Research Center for Gas Innovation (RCGI), established by FAPESP and Shell, headquartered at the Polytechnic School of the University of São Paulo (Poli-USP). The RCGI is one of the Engineering Research Centers (ERC) funded by São Paulo Research Foundation – FAPESP in partnership with companies.
“This is a concept known as Carbon Capture Storage (CCS). In this case, the CO2 is stored in large caverns in the salt layer itself. This is perhaps one of the best ways to obtain clean energy from a fossil fuel during the production process,” said Julio Meneghini, a professor at Poli-USP and RCGI coordinator.
Meneghini was one of the speakers on the first day of sessions held during FAPESP Week London, taking place in London February 11-12, 2019.
The site of the cavern in which the initial tests will be run has not yet been determined, but is expected to be in one of the areas that hold pre-salt oil fields. During this initial phase, it will likely be half the size of the caverns that will be used when the technology is operating at full capacity: 450 meters in height by 150 meters in width.
According to Meneghini, Brazil will be the first place in the world to use this concept, and the model could be exported to other countries. In addition to storing CO2, the cavern can also store methane and separate the two gases using gravity. Since CH4, also referred to as natural gas, has a lower density, it will remain in the top part of the cavern for possible later use. The carbon dioxide will remain in the lower part.
The researcher expects that at least the initial cavern construction tests will take place by 2022. The most optimistic scenario provides that 2022 will be the year the cavern begins operations.
Carbon gas capture
“What is new is not just the cavern, but the various innovations that go along with it, such as supersonic gas separators, compressors designed optimizing topology, and graphene nanotube membranes used to separate the gases,” said the researcher.
The new CO2 compressors are vital to the functioning of the project, given the extreme pressure conditions found there. From the water line itself, the distance from the surface to the sea floor is 2,000 to 3,000 meters in depth. That and other variables leave gas in what is known as the supercritical state.
“It has the density of a liquid and the viscosity of a gas. Therefore, a compressor designed for that specific condition is necessary. We have developed a new methodology that consists of optimizing the compressor precisely to the conditions of the supercritical fluid,” Meneghini told.
Another technology related to the carbon dioxide caverns are the gas separators. Also because of the pre-salt conditions, what is known as variable geometry supersonic separators are being developed for each composition of the mixture of CO2 and methane.
Besides that, graphene nanotube membranes are also being developed to separate the gases with the least possible energy loss.
Carbon gas capture can also occur during ethanol generation. “The captured gas may be stored or used in the food industry, in the production of carbonated drinks like soda. By doing this, negative emission values can be obtained,” said Meneghini, who explained that the experiments are still being carried out on a small scale.
The technologies are emerging within a context of increasing per capita energy demand throughout the world and the need to mitigate emissions in light of global climate change.
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About São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP)
The São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) is a public institution with the mission of supporting scientific research in all fields of knowledge by awarding scholarships, fellowships and grants to investigators linked with higher education and research institutions in the State of São Paulo, Brazil. FAPESP is aware that the very best research can only be done by working with the best researchers internationally. Therefore, it has established partnerships with funding agencies, higher education, private companies, and research organizations in other countries known for the quality of their research and has been encouraging scientists funded by its grants to further develop their international collaboration. You can learn more about FAPESP at http://www.fapesp.br/en and visit FAPESP news agency at http://www.agencia.fapesp.br/en to keep updated with the latest scientific breakthroughs FAPESP helps achieve through its many programs, awards and research centers. You may also subscribe to FAPESP news agency at http://agencia.fapesp.br/subscribe.
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Waste of perfectly good methane and CO2. Locking CO2 in a cavern is to a plant the same as throwing good food in the garbage to a hungry child, except that it is likely to waste a whole lot more energy in the process.
Looks like a solution in search of a problem.
A solution to an artificial problem.
An expensive solution to an artificial problem.
A solution to a non-problem
By the time you scavenge the CO2 during production, and then after combustion, you’ll have no energy left to do what you wanted to do in the first place, which is to power a vehicle down the street. Bigger operations like oil platforms already catch the methane and use it to power the extraction process, as this saves them money. The CO2 is released for plants to use.
This is a really good idea. Because when they discover it was a terrible idea they can let it out, no harm done.
Lot of carbon stored in human bodies. Let’s make more humans.
Cows too.
From the article: “The innovation, the result of a patent deposited in 2018, consists of injecting the CO2 and CH4 that comes from wells during oil extraction into salt caverns as a way to reduce the amount of carbon gas in the emissions.”
Well, there are patents and then there are defensible patents. The patent mentioned above does NOT fall into the second category.
The concept of storing compressed gases, including methane, is not new or innovative. Check out this article from 2015 that explicitly refers to doing this: https://www.eia.gov/naturalgas/storage/basics/
In a Wikipedia comprehensive article reviewing the history of CCS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage ), there is direct reference to notable CCS large scale facilities that have been operating continuously since as far back as 1972, including:
— Terrell Natural Gas Processing Plant – US (1972)
— Enid Fertilizer – US (1982)
— Shute Creek Gas Processing Facility – US (1986)
— Sleipner CO2 Injection – Norway (1996); of note, this project is the “first to inject its captured CO2 into a geological feature for the purpose of storage rather than economically compromising EOR (enhanced oil recovery)”.
Co2 in the atmosphere is not related to the temperature; why does anybody want to decrease it.
https://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-higher-in-past.htm
Hydrocarbon fuels.
“Carbon Capture”
Just a future “Lake Nyos” waiting to happen. May those poor soles rest in peace.
Imagine what an underground storage facility that held one cubic kilometer of liquid CO2 could cause in death and destruction. I figure minimum safe distance from such a facility would be about 500 miles (NO not 50, 500!).
I know a bit dramatic, as I don’t know if that much CO2 would effervesce in an instant. But if it did, and CO2 being a heavy gas, could smother a massive area of several thousand square miles.
The simpler process would be to develop bacteria designed to undertake direct reduction of the carbon dioxide . Transition metals bonded to oxygen have been show n to be adaptable to this sort of treatment, creating the zero valence metal as a direct consequence of bacteria based direct reduction. I am sure that with a bit of effort our group could develop a similar process for the direct reduction of carbon dioxide. It is much easier to handle carbon as carbon and vent the oxygen to the atmosphere.
Worth a shot for sure.
Go for it . . . there’s money in them thar hills!
Are the Greenies so THICK, that they do not realise the dangers of storing CO2 in any large underground space. If it gets out, and remember “Murphy’s Law, it will, then by displacing Oxygen it will kill all life forms, and that includes us too.
It has happened before.
MJE
It won’t kill anaerobic life forms. And plants as well as seeds and spores will probably survive long enough for the CO2 to disperse. But otherwise you are correct.
John Endicott February 14, 2019 at 6:07 am
There you go again. Nobody needs or wants your google search results link. Learn how to make a proper links to articles of interests.
Reply
beng135 February 14, 2019 at 7:33 am
Mods, it’s time to just delete the google links (leave the rest) this guy spews.
__________________________________________________
John Endicott, how can you know
“Nobody needs or wants your google search results links. ”
beng135,
“Mods, it’s time to just delete the google links (leave the rest).”
– maybe you take a google search course so you can compete.
John Endicott, how can you know
I “know” because
1) just about everyone here knows how to use search engines (find me some people, besides yourself, who does not)
2) just about everyone here knows there are more search engines out there than googles (find me some people, besides yourself, who does not)
3) just about everyone here prefers direct links to specific articles rather than search page results for searches they did not ask for (find me some people, besides yourself, who does not)
– maybe you take a google search course so you can compete.
you need to take a course in how to properly link to specific articles – there’s no maybe about it.
You’ve been told several times by several people that your search results links are useless and annoying, yet you continue to persist in doing it. That’s pure rudeness on your part.
What’s the effect of storing these gases on the organisms living in the caves? I didn’t see any mention of an environmental impact study.
I suppose the supercritical CO2 could be used to extract cannabinoids in a side process before burying it. /s
They’re making a huge mistake. A dangerous mistake.