Iceland is about to open the world’s largest carbon capture plant, where CO2 will be processed and pumped with water into underground stone to be stored forever.
Nicknamed Orca, it is expected to capture 4,000 tons of carbon dioxide each year and is being advertised as the world’s “biggest climate-positive facility.”
Orca’s eight collector containers are sustainably powered by the geothermal Hellisheidi Power Station and use a two-step process to remove carbon from the atmosphere.
A fan draws air into the collector and then a highly selective filter material captures carbon dioxide until it is full. The collector is then closed and its contents are heated to a temperature between 80–100°C, which concentrates and purifies the carbon dioxide before it is permanently stored.
Carbfix mixes this concentrated carbon dioxide with hot water and then pumps it deep below the Earth’s surface where it reacts with basalt rock and slowly turns into stone over a period of several years
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Carbon capture and storage (CCS) removes CO2 from the atmosphere, primarily at the source of emission, transporting it via pipeline to another facility where it is buried or used for other purposes, like enhanced oil recovery. (EOR). It can refer to the direct or indirect removal of CO2; for example, employing carbon sinks like hundreds of trees or mangroves or kelp beds.
CCS is a game-changer for fossil fuel companies, who are employing it to continue emissions by finding a way to catch up and store carbon. It is a key part of many developed countries' plans to cut emissions to Net Zero by the year 2050. Opponents decry the procedure, as it allows fossil fuel companies to put off cutting back on GHG emissions, thereby delaying the need for worldwide implementation of renewable clean energy sources.
In the United States, the Biden administration climate change plan incorporates scenarios that rely heavily on CCS as part of drawing down carbon emissions. According to the IEEFA, to meet its climate targets, carbon capture and storage in the US “should increase tenfold” over the next decade.( ieefa.org/...)
Other concerns with CCS projects include:
- large improperly constructed plants could produce rather than offset carbon
- carbon could leak from underground aquifers
- retrofitting existing plants to become carbon processing facilities is exorbitantly expensive (The Climate Connection)
Business as Usual, With A Twist
One example of a company using CCS to keep its coal company afloat is The Dakota Gasification Company. Its Great Plains Synfuels Plant has been capturing carbon for well over 20 years, allowing it to continue mining coal without releasing carbon. The plant has captured 20 million metric tons of CO2, about 2 million tons each year. Carbon is captured and washed before being piped to Saskatchewan, Canada, where it is employed for enhanced oil recovery (EOR).
EOR is employed to extend the life of an oil well by extracting oil that could not otherwise be reached.
Currently, most of the CO2 used in EOR in the United States comes from natural sources underground and not from carbon capture.
There are, however, some projects that use CO2 captured from anthropogenic sources for EOR: the Century and Petra Nova plants in Texas are two of the largest such facilities. For these, it is important to track who claims credit for the avoided CO2 emissions. A credit associated with storing CO2 underground can only be counted once: either it can reduce the emissions from the original source when it was captured or it can reduce the emissions from oil production. It cannot do both.
For example, say a capture unit is attached to a coal-fired power plant and the captured CO2 is transported to and injected in a CO2-EOR site. In this case, it is not possible for both the electricity generated to be low-carbon and for the CO2-EOR to be low-carbon. To put this another way, if a coal-fired power plant operator were to pay a CO2-EOR operator to store captured CO2, the CO2-EOR operator could not claim that the oil produced has negative emissions. www.iea.org/...
In China’s Guizhou province, PetroChina is involved in a deal with Shell to create a huge tree-planting project designed to “cancel out emissions from natural gas burned for energy in offices and homes.” This trend involves pairing fossil fuel use with carbon offsets, which can be purchased to offset emissions.
“With this deal, PetroChina will be able to provide carbon-neutral gas to Chinese businesses and households in line with China’s 2060 carbon-neutrality aspirations,” Shell explained: the trees would absorb millions of tonnes of carbon over the coming years, balancing out the pollution from the production and use of the fuel.
“This is the latest attempt to try to market fossil fuels of any type as part of the transition [to clean energy],” says Gilles Dufrasne, of the not-for-profit group Carbon Market Watch. “I don't think there is such a thing as a ‘carbon neutral’ fossil fuel, it’s a bit of an oxymoron.” The Financial Times. Carbon offsets: a licence to pollute or a path to net zero emissions?
For the first article on this informational series on CCS, visit Rotten Eggs, CO2 Pipelines & A Net Zero Pledge.