A Novel Approach To Effluent Treatment In Gas-To-Liquid (GTL)

Preparing the ground for the implementation of a large-scale CCS demonstration in China based on an IGCC-CCS thermal power plant: The China-EU COACH Project

Limits to Paris compatibility of CO2 capture and utilization

Climate change is now considered the greatest threat to global health and security. Greenhouse effect, which results in global warming, is considered the main driver of climate change. Carbon dioxide (CO2) emission has been identified as the largest contributor to global warming. The Paris Agreement, which is the biggest international treaty on Climate Change, has an ambitious goal to reach Net Zero CO2 emission by 2050. Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCUS) is the most promising approach in the portfolio of options to reduce CO2 emission. A good geological CCUS facility must have a high storage potential and robust containment efficiency. Storage potential depends on the storage capacity and well injectivity. The major target geological facilities for CO2 storage include deep saline reservoirs, depleted oil and gas reservoirs, Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) wells, and unmineable coal seams. Deep saline formations have the highest storage potential but challenging well injectivity. Mineral dissolution, salt precipitation, and fines mobilization are the main mechanisms responsible for CO2 injectivity impairment in saline reservoirs. This chapter reviews literature spanning several decades of work on CO2 injectivity impairment mechanisms especially in deep saline formations and their technical and economic impact on CCUS projects.

Growing concern over the impact of increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHGs), especially carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), in the atmosphere has led to suggested mitigation techniques. One proposal that is attracting widespread attention is carbon capture and storage (CCS). This mitigation approach involves capture of CO 2 and permanent storage in geologic formations, such as oil and gas reservoirs, deep saline formations, and unmineable coal seams. Critical to the successful implementation of this approach is the development of a robust monitoring, verification, and accounting (MVA) program. Defining the site characteristics of a proposed geologic storage project is the first step in developing a monitoring program. Following site characterization, the second step involves developing hypothetical models describing important mechanisms that control the behavior of injected CO 2 . A wide array of advanced monitoring technologies is currently being evaluated by the Weyburn―Midale Project, the Frio Project, and the U.S. Department of Energy's Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnerships Program. These efforts are evaluating and determining which monitoring techniques are most effective and economic for specific geologic situations, information that will be vital in guiding future projects. Although monitoring costs can run into millions of dollars, they are typically only a small part of the overall cost of a CO 2 storage project. Ultimately, a robust MVA program will be critical in establishing CCS as a viable GHG mitigation strategy.

Among the many scenarios that have been proposed to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to the atmosphere, carbon-capture and storage (CCS) in geological reservoirs represents the method most technologically feasible and capable of accommodating the large amounts of CO2 that are generated on an annual basis by combustion of fossil fuels (IPCC, 2005). Geological environments and processes that have been proposed for CCS include deep, unmineable coal seams, depleted oil and gas reservoirs, organic-rich shale basins, deep saline formations, and mineral carbonation of basalts. Of these various options, the one that is most attractive owing to its widespread distribution and capacity to store large amounts of CO2 is deep saline formations, with the U.S. Department of Energy reporting that saline formations in the United States could potentially store more than 2,100–20,000 billion metric tons of CO2 (DOE, 2012). A recently released assessment of geologic carbon dioxide storage potential (USGS, 2013) estimates a capacity ranging from 2,400 to 3,700 billion metric tonnes (Gt) of CO2, which corresponds to the low end of the DOE estimate. When supercritical CO2 (scCO2) is injected into a saline formation, it may be stored in various ways. Initially, the CO2 will be stored by structural and stratigraphic trapping, whereby scCO2 is trapped beneath an impermeable confining layer that prohibits the upward migration of the more buoyant scCO2. Some scCO2 may also be stored by residual trapping in pores via capillary forces. In the discussion to follow, we include residual trapping with structural/stratigraphic trapping as all of these processes involve the storage of a scCO2 phase and, as such, the volume requirements are assumed to be identical for these storage mechanisms for a given mass of CO2. Over time, …

Providing for increasing global energy needs while managing carbon dioxide emissions is the dual energy challenge the modern world faces. In order to meet this challenge, reliable and dispatchable low carbon energy sources are a likely component. For many scenarios, this suggests that cost effective carbon dioxide capture will be a key technology.[1] Carbon capture with carbonate fuel cells (CFCs) may be one such technology option.[2]Carbonate fuel cells concentrate carbon dioxide from the cathode to the anode as part of their normal operation, effectively doing both carbon capture and low carbon power generation in a single process. (see Figure 1) When generating power, typical carbon dioxide concentrations fed to the CFC cathode tend to be higher than carbon dioxide emissions of many industrial processes. This means that if we want to capture that carbon dioxide, we need the fuel cell to operate at lower carbon dioxide concentrations than it typically does. For carbon capture operations, cathode inlet carbon dioxide concentrations could be as low as 4%. Additionally, under typical power generation operations, CFCs only capture a fraction of the carbon dioxide (<50%) fed to the cathode, where for carbon capture rates may be as high as 90%. Together these two constraints (low initial concentration and higher capture) results in very low carbon dioxide concentrations in the cell, particularly at the cathode outlet. This may impact the fundamental chemistry of the process. Carbon dioxide capture at 4% and lower was tested in a fuel cell, specifically designed to minimize mass transport effects external to the active cell components. Carbon capture was demonstrated at a range of carbon dioxide concentrations ranging from standard operation for power generation (>10%) to <1%. Additionally, oxygen concentrations and current densities were varied over likely operational ranges. We demonstrate that under most circumstances, operations under carbon capture conditions proceed via a similar mechanism to those under power generation conditions. However, in harsh or extreme conditions, where carbon dioxide concentrations are low (<0.5%) and/or current densities high, alternative mechanisms appear. We demonstrate how the CFC performs when these alternative mechanisms are present. Additionally, our findings suggest that they appear to utilize water in place of carbon dioxide and allow the cell to operate at conditions beyond theoretical complete carbon capture. [1] IEA World Energy Outlook 2018; Bloomberg New Energy Finance, New Energy Outlook 2018 [2] Ghezel-Ayagh H., Jolly S., Patel D., Hunt J., Steen W., Richardson C., Marina O., (2013) A Novel System for Carbon Dioxide Capture Utilizing Electrochemical Membrane Technology ECS Transaction Vol 51 (1) 265-272 Figure 1

Responses of Respiration to Increases in Carbon Dioxide Concentration and Temperature in Three Soybean Cultivars

This article, written by Senior Technology Editor Dennis Denney, contains highlights of paper IPTC 14215, ’A Novel Approach to Effluent Treatment in Gas-To-Liquid,’ by C.G. Enyi, M. Nagib, SPE, and G.G. Nasr, Salford University, prepared for the 2011 International Petroleum Technology Conference, Bangkok, Thailand, rescheduled to 7-9 February 2012. The paper has not been peer reviewed. In a gas-to-liquid (GTL) plant, a large amount of reaction water is produced and various chemicals are used as intermediate treatment chemicals. The reaction water is contaminated by these chemicals. A laboratory-scale effluent-neutralization unit for pH control was designed and built to demonstrate the feasibility of the use of carbon dioxide (CO2) produced by reforming reactions in both the synthesis and the hydrogen-production units in the GTL plant for in-situ effluent treatment. Introduction Deep saline formations appear to offer potential to store several hundred years’ worth of CO2 emissions. Wider international collaboration and consensus are needed to ensure the viability, availability, and permanence of CO2 storage. However, carbon capture/sequestration faces both technical and economic challenges. Therefore, there is the need to explore other methods to deal with CO2 emissions. Transformation to chemical feedstock such as methanol is a commercially proven technology; however, CO2 captured from furnace flue gas will not be economical for this purpose because of its low pressure. Compression is required before the CO2 could be processed into methanol. Another process, the Sabatier reaction, converts CO2 to methane. This methanation process could prove to be less capital intensive, provided that reaction hydrogen is available from a low-cost source. This work focused on the in-situ use of produced CO2 from the reforming and Fischer-Tropsch (F-T) reactions in a GTL plant for effluent treatment instead of the conventional use of sulfuric acid, which is not produced in the GTL-plant complex. Because the objective of this work is to reduce CO2 emissions, modifying the entire effluent-treatment system (e.g., corrugated-plate interceptor separators, aeration equipment, clarifiers, dissolved-air flotation separators, and chlorination and equalization units) will not be required. Only the neutralization unit, which controls the pH of effluent, will be modified. GTL Technology GTL technology comprises a chemical conversion of natural gas to a stable liquid by means of the F-T process. This conversion makes it possible to obtain products that can be consumed directly as fuel (e.g., diesel, kerosene, and gasoline) or special products such as lubricants.

The IPCC published a special report on Carbon dioxide Capture and Storage (CCS) in 2005, stating that CCS is one of the promising options for mitigating carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere. Among several CO2 storage options, storing CO2 in saline aquifers is the most promising because of the large storage potential, estimated at from about 2,000 Gt CO2 to more than 10,000 Gt CO2. In this article, we first describe current global trends of CCS technology development and national policies. Some CCS technologies are already in practical use in several countries and are economically viable. Close attention has been paid recently to deep saline aquifer storage, which is expected to have a large storage potential of about 2,000 Gt CO2 throughout the world. We then focus on the mechanisms of deep saline aquifer CO2 storage. In deep saline aquifer storage, chemical reactions in the water-rock-CO2 system play important roles for trapping CO2 in the aquifer formation, as well as physical trapping by overburden impermeable cap rocks and residual gas trapping mechanisms. We also stress the importance of the long-term monitoring of the storage aquifer because CO2 would be trapped stably in the formation for a long time. It is thus important to develop effective monitoring techniques for the behavior of CO2 in the aquifer. Physical as well as chemical monitoring techniques should be used for storage aquifer monitoring. We conclude this article with discussions about storage potential in Japan and some important issues related to deep saline aquifers. Deep saline formations are distributed widely in Japan, and have the potential for the geological storage of 146 Gt of CO2. It is therefore economically feasible to use deep saline formations near large emission sources such as coal-fired power plants and integrated steel works. To realize CCS in Japan, it is important to make further advances in studies on the basic physical and chemical trapping mechanisms of water-rock-CO2 system, and in studies on the geological characteristics of aquifer formations.

This experiment was conducted to observe the effect of the composition of atmospheric gases on the respiration of fruits and vegetables. The average of repiration rate of eggplants, Japanese pears, spinach and cauliflower (under storage in modified atmosphere) were lower than that under storage in air. Especially, the respiration rate of the products stored in modified atmosphere conta fined 5% oxygen and 5% carbon dioxide was about half of that in air. (Experiment I.)It is clear that a decline in the respiration of these products in storge is brought about by a combination of super-normal carbon dioxide concentration and reduced oxygen concentration. However, the data in experiment I has not been elucidated which is the main fatter concerning the reduction in respiration.In order to test the precise contribution of each of these fatter, experiment II was conducted both tests on oxygen and carbon dioxide concentrations in atmospheric gases on the respiration of vegetables. Carbon dioxide test was carried out at the range of 0-20% and oxygen test was carried out at the range of 5-25%.In this experiment, the respiration rate of some vegetables could be controlled either by decrease of oxygen concentration or by increase of carbon dioxide concentration.It was found that there was three phases to control the respiration rate in practical CA-storage. Three phases were as follows: (1) decrease of oxygen concentration, (2) increase of carbon dioxide concentration and (3) both decrease of oxygen concentration and increase of carbon dioxide concentration. Vegetables showed pattern (1) were spinach, pea in pod, kidney bean, lettuce, bell peppers and eggplants. They were very sensitive to the oxygen content in atmospheric gases. Cauliflower belonged to pattern (2) which shows relatively sensitive carbon dioxide concentration. Other vegetables which are pattern (3) are strawberries, celery, tomatoes, welsh onion and garden asparagus. These vegetables were sensetive to carbon dioxide and oxygen concentration in the atmospheric gases. Thus, it was considered that the response of vegetables to special gases reducing the respiration was different from the kinds of vegetables.

At present, there is no universal method for studying the solubility of substances in supercritical fluid media. The expediency of combining certain methods of solution saturation and composition analysis is determined by the object of study, the range of concentrations. In the case of low solubility of solids in the solvent, a flow-through system or dynamic solubility measurement method is usually used to obtain the required amount of precision weighing material. The dynamic method for measuring the solubility of substances in supercritical carbon dioxide is not without its drawbacks, which primarily include the need to strictly control the mass flow rate of supercritical carbon dioxide in the cell with the substance being measured. With an increase in the consumption of supercritical dioxide from zero (static method) to a certain value, the concentration of the measured substance in supercritical carbon dioxide within the acceptable level of uncertainty for measuring the solubility of 4-6% can be considered unchanged. The plateau of the concentration of the measured substance in supercritical carbon dioxide from the flow rate obtained in the diagram corresponds to the saturation state of the solvent, which is carbon dioxide and the solute, which corresponds to the concept of solubility. However, with a further increase in the consumption of carbon dioxide, the concentration begins to decrease and it can no longer be considered equilibrium. This is due to the fact that at significantly high flow rates of carbon dioxide, which is a solvent, coming into contact with the substance being dissolved, it does not have time to saturate it and, accordingly, weakly dissolves it. This concentration does not correspond to the concept of solubility. Thus, the determination of the range of mass flow rate at which the conditional state of saturation of the solvent and the solute is reached is the most important stage in studies to measure the solubility of substances in supercritical fluids. Based on the results of experimental data measuring the solubility of tannin in supercritical carbon dioxide, the dependences of the concentration of tannin in supercritical carbon dioxide on the mass flow rate are presented. It follows from the results that, in the flow rate range of 0-0.6 g/min, the tannin concentration in supercritical carbon dioxide is practically independent of the solvent flow rate, which is evidence of the equilibrium of this concentration and its compliance with the concept of solubility.

This article, written by Assistant Technology Editor Karen Bybee, contains highlights of paper IPTC 11737, "The CO2 Pilot at Lacq: An Integrated Oxycombustion CO2 Capture and Geological-Storage Project in the South West of France," by Nicolas Aimard, Marc Lescanne, Gerard Mouronval, and Claude Prebende, Total, originally prepared for the 2007 International Petroleum Technology Conference, Dubai, UAE, 4-6 December. The paper has not been peer reviewed. In 2006, Total launched an integrated carbon-capture and -storage (CCS) project in southwest France. It entails the conversion of a steam boiler into an oxyfuel combustion unit, with oxy-gen being used for combustion rather than air to obtain a more-concentrated carbon dioxide (CO2) stream that is easier to capture. The pilot plant, which will produce some steam for use by other facilities, will emit up to 150,000 tons of CO2 over a 2-year period, which will be compressed and conveyed by pipeline to a depleted gas field, 8 miles away, where it will be injected into a deep carbonate reservoir. CO2 injection is scheduled to begin by the end of 2008. Introduction For decades to come, oil and gas will remain an energy source of choice. But oil and gas operators have to develop fields that require much more processing and energy while reducing greenhouse-gas emissions to mitigate climate-change consequences. Among the options, CCS is an important option for tackling greenhouse-gas emissions. While the worldwide CO2 atmospheric emission was approximately 30 billion tons in 2005, CO2 geological-storage capacity could be very significant: approximately 600 to 1,200 billion tons in depleted oil and gas fields, 3 to 200 billion tons in unmineable coal seams, and as much as 1,000 to 10,000 billion tons in deep saline formations. This represents 70 to 500 years of storage at current production rates. Industry pilot plants are necessary to ensure that CCS technology will be reliable, energy efficient, accepted by the public, and commercially viable. At the end of 2006, Total launched an integrated CCS project in southwest France that entails the conversion of a steam boiler into an oxyfuel combustion unit, with oxygen being used for combustion rather than air to obtain a more-concentrated CO2 stream that is easier to capture. The pilot plant will produce steam for use by other facilities and will emit 150,000 tons of CO2 over a 2-year period at the Lacq facilities. The CO2 will be treated, com-pressed, and conveyed by pipeline to the depleted Rousse gas field 18 miles away to be injected into a deep carbon-ate reservoir (Fig. 1).

This article, written by Senior Technology Editor Dennis Denney, contains highlights of paper SPE 126446, ’Industry Experience With CO2-Enhanced-Oil-Recovery Technology,’ by R.E. Sweatman, SPE, Halliburton; M.E. Parker, SPE, ExxonMobil; and S.L. Crookshank, American Petroleum Institute, prepared for the 2009 SPE International Conference on CO2 Capture, Storage, and Utilization, San Diego, California, 2-4 November. The paper has not been peer reviewed. This summary shows how the oil/gas industry has achieved success in engineering the process to capture, transport, and inject CO2 in enhanced-oil-recovery (EOR) projects. Some 37 years of safe and environmentally friendly large-scale operations, lessons learned, technical advancements, and millions of tons of CO2 injected demonstrate this success. With carbon capture and storage (CCS) being widely considered and with a few countries implementing commercial-scale CCS projects, technology transfer shares the experience of the oil/gas industry and the major contribution it can make as part of the solution for climate change. Introduction Since the first CO2-EOR patent was granted in 1952, the oil/gas industry has spent many tens of billions of dollars developing and implementing CO2-EOR technologies, asset development, and operational experience. As new sources of CO2 have become available, field-testing and demonstration or pilot-project activities have been conducted. These development and improvement efforts have been continuous since the first project in 1964. The first large-scale, commercial CO2-EOR project began operations in 1972 at the SACROC field in west Texas, which is still in operation. Many more projects have started since that time, and by 2008, the count reached 112 projects. Innovative, cost-effective materials, equipment, and methods continue to be developed and implemented, such as the introduction of real-time smart-well operations at SACROC. CO2-EOR Technology for CCS Deployment. Underground geological storage of CO2 is a promising technology for reducing greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions because much of the technology developed by the oil/gas industry that is associated with natural-gas processing and CO2 EOR can support the sound implementation of CCS. Large storage capacity exists in deep saline formations, depleted oil/gas reservoirs, and unmineable-coal seams. According to a report in 2005 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as much as 55% of a worldwide GHG-mitigation effort through 2100 could be achieved safely by use of CCS.

Anthropogenic emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) in atmosphere is equivocal and the major cause of global warming, significantly impacting the global climate change. Scientists, researchers, expert organizations, and policymakers suggest that in order to combat the instabilities caused by global warming, further investigation in the direction of safe CO2 storage should be at utmost priority. To reduce GHG concentration in atmosphere, carbon capture and storage (CCS) has emerged as a promising bridge technology, by capturing CO2 from the major sources such as cement factories, fossil fuel-based production plants, etc. and subsequently storing it in subsurface. CCS technology greatly reduces CO2 concentration and restricts and protects subsequent migration by safely storing within geologic formations for millions of years. The CO2 is injected into suitable geological formations at depths below 800 m or more, and various trapping mechanisms would prevent further migration of the stored CO2 to the surface. Potential candidates for safe storage of CO2 are geological storage (in geological formations, such as un-mineable coal seams, depleted oil and gas fields, and deep saline formations), ocean storage (direct release into ocean), and industrial fixation into inorganic carbonates. This chapter provides a detailed knowledge on the sources of GHG emissions into the atmosphere and the status of CCS process worldwide emphasizing on the various trapping mechanisms of CO2 in geological formations. The storage of CO2 in geological formations is greatly affected by environmental factors, so impact of these variables is described. In order to study the impact of these variables on CO2 sequestration, a state-of-the-art modeling techniques along with the numerical methods are reviewed comprehensively.

1. This paper addresses the question of whether, and how much, increased carbon dioxide concentrations have benefited the biosphere and humanity by stimulating plant growth, warming the planet and increasing rainfall.2. Empirical data confirms that the biosphere’s productivity has increased by about 14% since 1982, in large part as a result of rising carbon dioxide levels.3. Thousands of scientific experiments indicate that increasing carbon dioxide concentrations in the air have contributed to increases in crop yields.4. These increases in yield are very likely to have reduced the appropriation of land for farming by 11–17% compared with what it would otherwise be, resulting in more land being left wild.5. Satellite evidence confirms that increasing carbon dioxide concentrations have also resulted in greater productivity of wild terrestrial ecosystems in all vegetation types.6. Increasing carbon dioxide concentrations have also increased the productivity of many marine ecosystems.7. In recent decades, trends in climate-sensitive indicators of human and environmental wellbeing have improved and continue to do so despite claims that they would deteriorate because of global warming.8. Compared with the benefits from carbon dioxide on crop and biosphere productivity, the adverse impacts of carbon dioxide – on the frequency and intensity of extreme weather, on sea level, vector-borne disease prevalence and human health – have been too small to measure or have been swamped by other factors.9. Models used to influence policy on climate change have overestimated the rate of warming, underestimated direct benefits of carbon dioxide, overestimated the harms from climate change and underestimated human capacity to adapt so as to capture the benefits while reducing the harms.10. It is very likely that the impact of rising carbon dioxide concentrations is currently net beneficial for both humanity and the biosphere generally. These benefits are real, whereas the costs of warming are uncertain. Halting the increase in carbon dioxide concentrations abruptly would deprive people and the planet of the benefits of carbon dioxide much sooner than they would reduce any costs of warming.