The world’s first commercial-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) operation, Boundary Dam, got up and running last year in Saskatchewan – and if it reaches its potential, it will be like taking 250,000 cars off the road every year.
The concept of capturing carbon emissions and storing them underground as a weapon against global warming is one that’s been touted as a potential game-changer. But although Boundary Dam is an impressive feat, experts say more investment in CCS worldwide is needed if it is to live up to expectations.
A report from McKinsey cites a number of project delays and cancellations in recent years, due in part to the high cost of building a CCS operation. Experts say there aren’t enough incentives for industry, including funding and stronger government carbon policy and regulation, to advance the technology more quickly.
The technology, which grabs carbon dioxide from industrial plants like coal and gas-burning power generation operations, compresses it for transportation and stores it deep underground.
“The technology is certainly good enough and can be further de-risked with advanced research in monitoring to verify containment and conformance to meet the expectations of the public and requirements of regulators,” says Don Lawton, a professor of geophysics at the University of Calgary and director of the Containment and Monitoring Institute (CaMI). He points to the Boundary Dam and the pending startup of Shell Canada’s Quest CCS project near Edmonton as “good examples of CCS technology in action.”
There are 14 large-scale CCS projects, including Boundary Dam, now operating worldwide, according to the Global CCS Institute. Eight more are under construction, including Shell’s Quest project, which is the first such project for an oil sands operation in Canada. In total, these 22 projects have the capacity to around 40 million tonnes of CO2 annually.
There are another 13 large-scale CCS projects in advanced stages of development and another 12 large-scale projects on the drawing board.
The institute says there is a “global need for significant financial investments” to bring more commercial-scale demonstration projects online. These will provide “significant ‘learning by doing’ benefits” that will help lower the costs.
How does it work?
CCS technology involves capturing waste CO2 and compressing it before it is transported by ship or pipeline to be deposited in deep rock formations about 1.5 – 2 kilometres underground. The storage is done ideally in “geologically quiet environments,” where there are believed to be no fault lines or volcanoes and with no impact on drinking water for nearby communities.
In Canada, for example, some of the best regions for storing CO2 are southern Alberta, central Saskatchewan and parts of Nova Scotia. Similar types of technologies have been used in the oil and gas sector, in refining and in chemical plants for decades. “What we are actually doing here is repurposing those technologies with the object of preventing CO2 from going into the atmosphere,” said Luke Warren, chief executive at the London-based Carbon Capture and Storage Association.
There are three main carbon-capture technologies: Post-combustion, where carbon dioxide is captured and absorbed in a solvent; pre-combustion, when the coal or gas, for example, is pre-treated and converted into a mix of hydrogen and carbon dioxide, with the carbon dioxide separated; and oxycombustion, where the coal or gas is burned in oxygen instead of air, producing a more concentrated carbon dioxide stream that’s easier to separate.
Boundary Dam uses post-combustion, and is the first coal-fired CCS project of its type. It was built by converting an aging unit at the power station near Estevan, Sask. into a long-term producer of electricity. It has the capacity to reduce emissions by 1 million tonnes annually (there’s your 250,000 cars).
Other current and pending projects using post-combustion include the Sinopec Shengli Power Plant Project in China, set to start in 2018 and the Rotterdam Opslag en Afvang Demonstratie project (ROAD) in the Netherlands, scheduled for 2019.
Pre-combustion technology is used at the Petrobras Lula Oil Field CCS Project in Brazil, as well as the Sleipner CO2 Storage Project in Norway. Oxycombustion technology is still under development and is not yet in commercial use.
What’s next?
CCS can potentially contribute around 14 per cent of total energy-related CO2 reductions by 2050, the Global CCS Institute estimates.
“If we really want to reduce emissions, we need to be putting tens of millions of tonnes of C02 underground − millions of tonnes isn’t enough,” says CaMI’s Mr. Lawton, citing the high costs that have been a barrier to project development.
A lot of R and D is happening to try and make that happen.
The Boundary Dam's splitter uses heat to help separate CO2 from emissions.
For example, GE was recently awarded nearly $1-million (U.S.) by the U.S. Department of Energy to plan and propose a large scale pilot testing of its CO2 Capture technology solution for power plants. GE chemists have developed a solution that uses a class of amino silicone compounds, similar to those found in hair conditioners and fabric softeners, to attach to and “wash out” CO2 gas from a power plant flue stack.
“For decades, scientists from around the world have focused their efforts on finding more effective, less expensive ways to reduce CO2 emissions in the atmosphere,” said Phil DiPietro, technical manager, CO2 Capture and Separation at GE’s Oil and Gas Technology Center in Oklahoma City. “Through this project, we will have the opportunity to perform tests at a much larger scale to learn how to make it work in a power plant.”
The Pembina Institute, a sustainable energy think tank, released an analysis last year showing that emerging technologies have the potential to lower costs of CCS operations by three-to-six per cent annually, making them more feasible for oil sands operations over the long term. If 40 per cent of oil sands facilities had CCS operations working, Pembina estimates that annual oil sands emissions could be stabilized at about two times current emission levels by the middle of the century.
“By combining CCS with other means of emission reductions, which could include conservation, implementation of low emission intensity production technologies, efficiency upgrades, increased use of renewables and the phase-out of coal-fired power, it is possible to reduce annual provincial emissions below current levels in the long run, even with consistent year over year growth in oil sands production,” the report says.
For more innovation insights, visit www.gereports.ca
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