Large-scale Carbon Dioxide Research Articles

Toward the Development and Deployment of Large-Scale Carbon Dioxide Capture and Conversion Processes

In light of the depletion of fossil fuels and the increased daily requirements for liquid fuels and chemicals, CO2 should indeed be regarded as a valuable C1 additional feedstock for sustainable manufacturing of liquid fuels and chemicals. Development and deployment of CO2 capture and chemical conversion processes are among the grand challenges faced by today’s scientists and engineers. Very few of the reported CO2 capture and conversion technologies have been employed for industrial installations on a large scale, where high-efficiency, cost/energy-effectiveness, and environmental friendliness are three keys factors. The CO2 capture technologies from stationary sources and ambient air based on solvents, solid sorbents, and membranes are discussed first. Transforming CO2 to liquid fuels and chemicals, which are presently produced from petroleum, through thermochemical, electrochemical, photochemical, and biochemical routes are discussed next. The relevant state-of-the-art computational methods and tools a...

The Past and Present Quest for Storing Solar Energy as Fuel

The full potential of solar energy cannot be realized unless there is method to store it and use it as fuel. Despite large efforts in the past and the present there has been very little progress in the quest to develop a practical, inexpensive and efficient photoelectrochemical solar fuel device. In this talk I will give both a brief historical look at the past efforts to solve this problem and provide some options and opinions about the way forward. I will explain the reasons that photoelectrochemical production of hydrogen from water is preferable to large-scale carbon dioxide reduction for solar fuel production. Given this it is clear that materials that are stable and have the proper band gaps for an efficient photoelectrochemical water splitting device are currently unknown. In addition these materials need to be catalytic for water oxidation or reduction reactions or have catalyst layers deposited on their surfaces. I will discuss combinatorial methods for discovering new oxide semiconductors and solid-state catalysts that might be further optimized to be useful in a solar water splitting device. Researchers need to focus on quickly evaluating the many new materials that will emerge from the combinatorial searches to identify a few that have the potential to be stable, efficient and inexpensive. An example of collaborations between my laboratory and laboratories will be given as an example. A new concept for storing solar energy that is a simpler and potentially more efficient than a water splitting system will also be described.

Enhanced Performance of Ag-Doped Oxygen Electrode Based Solid Oxide Electrolyser Cell under High Temperature Electrolysis of Steam

Solid oxide electrolyser (SOE) has been receiving increasing attention due to its potential applications in large-scale hydrogen production and carbon dioxide recycling for fuels. Improving the performance of SOE cell through oxygen electrode development has been of main interest because the major polarization loss of the SOE cell is at the oxygen electrode during high temperature electrolysis (HTE). In the present study, Ag was doped into (La0.75Sr0.25)0.95MnO3+δ(LSM) based oxygen electrode of Ni/YSZ cathode-supported SOE cell through a solid state method enhanced by ball milling. Short stacks were manufactured using doped and undoped cells and tested under HTE of steam at 800°C up to 150h for in situ comparative study of doping effect. The cells with doped oxygen electrodes showed less polarization loss, lower resistance and improved performance by comparison with the undoped cell. Post-mortem examination revealed Ag migrated from the current collecting layer to the electrolyte/anode interface, which may promote the cell performance.

Barangaroo South harbourside basement, Australia, challenges and solutions

At Barangaroo South on Sydney's central business district waterfront, Australia, Lend Lease is working with the New South Wales government on the A$6 billion (£4 billion) transformation of a former container port into a thriving business, residential and leisure precinct. The vision is that Barangaroo South will enhance Sydney's position as an internationally appealing, globally competitive, environmentally sustainable city. The development will be Australia's first large-scale carbon dioxide neutral precinct. Barangaroo South will feature three commercial towers ranging in height from 39 to 49 storeys, sharing a common, two-level basement to be retained around its perimeter by an approximately 770 m long diaphragm wall, socketed into Sydney sandstone. As the basement excavation will be below sea level, it is essential that the site retention wall for the basement also acts as a cut-off against groundwater ingress. This paper provides an overview of the design and construction challenges facing the installation of the diaphragm wall and the innovative solutions adopted to overcome these challenges.

Using baseline monitoring data to strengthen the geological characterization of a Niagaran Pinnacle Reef

Abstract The Midwest Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership has collected a full suite of initial monitoring data from its large-scale carbon dioxide (CO2) injection test site in the an depleted oil field to provide a baseline set of data. Data collection will be repeated after the field has been pressurized to the original discovery pressure using CO2. Data collection includes five walkaway vertical seismic profiles, microseismic monitoring, three pulsed neutron capture wireline logs, a borehole gravity meter survey, and satellite monitoring. An overview of these monitoring techniques and how they are being applied to improve current geologic understanding of this Niagaran Pinnacle Reef is presented.

Evaluation of large-scale carbon dioxide storage potential in the basal saline system in the Alberta and Williston Basins in North America

Abstract The Plains CO 2 Reduction (PCOR) Partnership performed a case study on the feasibility of underground carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) storage in the basal saline system of central North America. The calculated volumetric CO 2 storage resource potential in this system is 373 Gt. Two dynamic modeling scenarios were designed to address the dynamic CO 2 storage capacity and pressure transient. Various strategies were tested including injection well location and spacing, injection optimization, and water extraction during CO 2 injection. This study underscores the potential difference in CO 2 storage potential between estimates made with volumetric approaches and those made with dynamic methodologies.

Energetics of Electrochemically-mediated Amine Regeneration

Cost-effective, large-scale carbon dioxide capture is a critical technology for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, and current capture technologies are energy intensive and difficult to deploy in existing power plants. We have previously introduced a novel electrochemically-mediated process for amine regeneration, and demonstrated its feasibility with a proof-of-concept system that can efficiently modulate amine affinity to carbon dioxide under the effect of redox-responsive molecules. The electrochemical process is simple to install, obviating the need for expensive retrofits. In addition, due to its targeted nature, the process has the potential for lower energy consumption as compared with the thermal amine capture process. In this work, we analyze the energy consumption of the electrochemical process, building from thermodynamic lower bounds, and addressing electrochemical kinetics, transport requirements as well compression and pumping energy. The analysis suggests that the electrochemical process can generate carbon dioxide at the conditions required for transportation with an electrical energy consumption of less than 50 kJ per mole of carbon dioxide captured and compressed. The electrochemical process efficiency can be further improved by optimizing flow design and utilizing additives to reduce activation overpotentials.

Trinuclear zinc complexes for biologically relevant μ3-oxoanion binding and carbon dioxide fixation

Tremendous efforts have been made to model multinuclear zinc enzymes. Despite such efforts, it remains a challenge to design single molecules that stabilize μ3-oxoanion-bridged trinuclear zinc cores as analogues of enzymatic active sites. The conversion of carbon dioxide to carbonates is a biological process mediated by carbonic anhydrases and a natural process for large-scale carbon dioxide fixation. Here we report a trinuclear zinc scaffold for capturing biologically relevant μ3-oxoanions, such as phosphate and carbonate, and its ability to catalytically convert carbon dioxide to carbonates. Structurally characterized {Zn3(μ3-PO4)} and {Zn3(μ3-CO3)} cores are observed in solution by nuclear magnetic resonance and high-resolution mass spectrometry. The activity of the μ3-carbonate unit can be sterically controlled, which makes the carbon dioxide fixation cycle feasible. Our results suggest that this trinuclear zinc scaffold catalytically converts carbon dioxide to carbonates under mild conditions and provides a good model for studying oxoanion-bridged zinc cores in solution.

Monitoring the geologic storage of carbon dioxide using multicomponent SAR interferometry

Monitoring the geologic storage of carbon dioxide using multi-component SAR interferometry Alessio Rucci 1 , D. W. Vasco 2 , and Fabrizio Novali 1 Tele Rilevamento Europa, Milano, Italy Berkeley Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720 SUMMARY Combining interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) data from ascending and de- scending orbits we estimate both quasi-vertical and quasi-east-west displacements for a region in central Algeria, an area encompassing an active large-scale carbon dioxide stor- age project, the In Salah gas storage project. The surface deformation associated with the injection into three horizontal wells is clearly visible in the InSAR estimates. We find that the addition of the quasi-horizontal displacement data enables us to discriminate between source models producing similar vertical displacements. In particular, predictions from a model consisting of a distribution of volume changes restricted to the reservoir depth interval satisfies the quasi-vertical data but does not match the quasi-east-west displace- ment data. However, aperture changes on sub-vertical damage zones, intersecting each of the injection wells, give rise to displacements matching both the quasi-east-west and vertical components. In all cases we can match the observations with the most significant volume and aperture changes in regions immediately surrounding the injection wells. Key words: Interferometry, deformation, inverse problem

CO2/EOR and Geological Carbon Storage Resource Potential in the Niagaran Pinnacle Reef Trend, Lower Michigan, USA

Early Silurian age, Niagaran pinnacle reef trend (NPRT) oil fields in the Guelph Formation in Northern Lower Michigan (NNPRT) comprise a giant oil province with nearly 63.6 million cubic meters (Mm3) of cumulative petroleum and 680 billion cubic meters (Bm3) of natural gas production (through 2010) from over 700 discrete reservoirs at depths of 800-2100 m. Several NNPRT fields are the main target of a proposed, DOE-NETL funded, large scale carbon dioxide (CO2) utilization and sequestration project. The NNPRT comprises closely-spaced, but highly geologically compartmentalized and laterally discontinuous oil and gas fields many of which have either reached or are nearing their economic limit in primary production mode. Total oil production from the largest 207 oil fields in the NNPRT, each with more than 80,000 m3 of cumulative oil production per field, constitutes 86% or 54.6 Mm3 of trend oil production totals and are considered most likely targets for CO2/EOR activities in the future. We have evaluated regional CO2/Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) potential in these NNPRT fields from historic production data in addition to recovery efficiencies observed in seven, on-going, commercial CO2/EOR projects and determined that incremental CO2/EOR potential in these fields ranges from 22-33 Mm3. We have also evaluated trend-wide Geological Storage Resource (GSR) potential using 2 different approaches: 1) a produced fluid volumes approach, and 2) a gross storage capacity approach using petrophysical well log estimates of net, effective porosity in NNPRT field wells and estimates of reservoir acreage from GIS data. These approaches provide robust low and high estimates of more than 200 Mmt but less than 500 Mmt (respectively) for Geological Storage Resource (GSR) potential in the NNPRT.

Large-Scale CO2 Capture Demonstration Plant Using Fluor's Econamine FG PlusSM Technology at NRG's WA Parish Electric Generating Station

Fluor has designed a large-scale carbon dioxide recovery demonstration plant using the Econamine FG Plus SM technology to recover 90% of the CO2 from a 240 MV equivalent flue gas slip stream at NRG Energy's WA Parish Electric Generating Station. When in operation, the plant will produce 4,776 metric tonnes per day of supercritical carbon dioxide, which will be available for sequestration via enhanced oil recovery. The CO2 capture plant design includes technology advancements that are expected to lower energy demands, reduce costs, and improve the environmental impact of CO2 capture. The paper summarizes the technological advancements and expected performance of the capture unit.

Energy-efficient data centers

Energy consumption of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector has grown exponentially in recent years. A major component of the today’s ICT is constituted by the data centers which have experienced an unprecedented growth in their size and population, recently. The Internet giants like Google, IBM and Microsoft house large data centers for cloud computing and application hosting. Many studies, on energy consumption of data centers, point out to the need to evolve strategies for energy efficiency. Due to large-scale carbon dioxide (\(\mathrm{CO}_2\)) emissions, in the process of electricity production, the ICT facilities are indirectly responsible for considerable amounts of green house gas emissions. Heat generated by these densely populated data centers needs large cooling units to keep temperatures within the operational range. These cooling units, obviously, escalate the total energy consumption and have their own carbon footprint. In this survey, we discuss various aspects of the energy efficiency in data centers with the added emphasis on its motivation for data centers. In addition, we discuss various research ideas, industry adopted techniques and the issues that need our immediate attention in the context of energy efficiency in data centers.

In silico screening of carbon-capture materials

One of the main bottlenecks to deploying large-scale carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) in power plants is the energy required to separate the CO(2) from flue gas. For example, near-term CCS technology applied to coal-fired power plants is projected to reduce the net output of the plant by some 30% and to increase the cost of electricity by 60-80%. Developing capture materials and processes that reduce the parasitic energy imposed by CCS is therefore an important area of research. We have developed a computational approach to rank adsorbents for their performance in CCS. Using this analysis, we have screened hundreds of thousands of zeolite and zeolitic imidazolate framework structures and identified many different structures that have the potential to reduce the parasitic energy of CCS by 30-40% compared with near-term technologies.

Modelling large-scale carbon dioxide injection into the Bunter Sandstone in the UK Southern North Sea

The Bunter Sandstone in the UK sector of the Southern North Sea Basin is a reservoir rock that is typically 200m or more thick and has variable but commonly fair to good porosity and permeability. East of the Dowsing Fault Zone it is folded into a number of large periclines as a result of post-depositional halokinesis in the underlying Zechstein salt. It is sealed by the overlying Haisborough Group and younger fine-grained strata and is underlain by the Bunter Shale and Zechstein Group. As such it appears to be an attractive target for industrial-scale CO2 storage. However, the very large masses of CO2 that would have to be injected and stored if CCS is to be an effective greenhouse gas mitigation option are likely to cause (a) significant pore fluid pressure rise and (b) displacement of formation brines from the reservoir. A series of reservoir flow simulations of large-scale CO2 injection was carried out to investigate these effects. A simple, 3D geocellular model of the Bunter Sandstone in the NE part of the UK sector of the Southern North Sea was constructed in the TOUGH2 reservoir simulator in which porosity and both horizontal and vertical permeability could be varied. The injection of CO2 at various rates into the model through a variable number of wells for 50 years was simulated and the model was then run forward for up to 3000 years to see how pore fluid pressures, brine displacement and CO2 distribution evolved. The simulations suggest that provided there is good connectivity within the reservoir, and 12 optimally distributed injection locations are used, 15–20 million tonnes of CO2 per year could be stored in the modelled area without the reservoir pore pressure exceeding 75% of the lithostatic pressure anywhere within the model. However, significant fluxes of the native pore fluid (saline brine) to the sea occurred at a point where the Bunter Sandstone crops out at the seabed. This suggests that the potential environmental impacts of brine displacement to the sea floor should be investigated. The injected CO2 fills only up to about 1% of the total pore space within the model. This indicates that pore fluid pressure rise may be a greater constraint on CO2 storage capacity than physical containment within the storage reservoir.

Stakeholder Views on Financing Carbon Capture and Storage Demonstration Projects in China

Chinese stakeholders (131) from 68 key institutions in 27 provinces were consulted in spring 2009 in an online survey of their perceptions of the barriers and opportunities in financing large-scale carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) demonstration projects in China. The online survey was supplemented by 31 follow-up face-to-face interviews. The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) was widely perceived as the most important institution in authorizing the first commercial-scale CCS demonstration project and authorization was viewed as more similar to that for a power project than a chemicals project. There were disagreements, however, on the appropriate size for a demonstration plant, the type of capture, and the type of storage. Most stakeholders believed that the international image of the Chinese Government could benefit from demonstrating commercial CCS and that such a project could also create advantages for Chinese companies investing in CCS technologies. In more detailed interviews with 16 financial officials, we found striking disagreements over the perceived risks of demonstrating CCS. The rate of return seen as appropriate for financing demonstration projects was split between stakeholders from development banks (who supported a rate of 5-8%) and those from commercial banks (12-20%). The divergence on rate alone could result in as much as a 40% difference in the cost of CO(2) abatement and 56% higher levelized cost of electricity based on a hypothetical case study of a typical 600-MW new build ultrasupercritical pulverized coal-fired (USCPC) power plant. To finance the extra operational costs, there were sharp divisions over which institutions should bear the brunt of financing although, overall, more than half of the support was expected to come from foreign and Chinese governments.

Health, safety, and environmental risks from energy production: a year-long reality check

Large-scale carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) offers the benefit of reducing CO{sub 2} emissions and thereby mitigating climate change risk, but it will also bring its own health, safety, and environmental risks. Curtis M. Oldenburg, Editor-in-Chief, considers these risks in the context of the broader picture of energy production. Over the last year, there have been major acute health, safety, and environmental (HSE) consequences related to accidents involving energy production from every major primary energy source. These are, in chronological order: (i) the Upper Big Branch (coal) Mine disaster, (ii) the Gulf of Mexico Macondo (oil) well blowout, (iii) the San Bruno (natural gas) pipeline leak and explosion, and (iv) the Fukushima (nuclear) reactor radioactivity releases. Briefly, the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster occurred in West Virginia on April 5, 2010, when natural methane in the mine ignited, causing the deaths of 29 miners, the worst coal mine disaster in the USA since 1970. Fifteen days later, the Macondo oil well in the Gulf of Mexico suffered a blowout, with a gas explosion and fire on the floating drilling platform that killed 11 people. The oil and gas continued to flow out of the well at the seafloor until July 15, 2010, spilling a total of approximately 5 million barrels of oil into the sea. On September 9, 2010, a 30-inch (76-cm) buried, steel, natural gas pipeline in San Bruno, California, leaked gas and exploded in a residential neighborhood, killing 8 people in their homes and burning a total of 38 homes. Flames were up to 1000 ft (300 m) high, and the initial explosion itself reportedly measured 1.1 on the Richter scale. Finally, on March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake off the coast of Japan's main island, Honshu, caused a tsunami that crippled the backup power and associated cooling systems for six reactor cores and their spent fuel storage tanks at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. At time of writing, workers trying to bring the crisis under control have been exposed to dangerous levels of radiation, and radioactive water and particulates have been released to the sea and atmosphere. These four disasters, all of which occurred within the past 12 months, were not unprecedented; similar events differing only in detail have happened around the world before, and such events will occur again. Today, developed nations primarily use fossil fuels to create affordable energy for comforts such as lighting, heating and air-conditioning, refrigeration, transportation, education, and entertainment, as well as for powering manufacturing, which creates jobs and a wealth of material goods. In addition to the risks of the existing energy infrastructure that have become obvious through these recent disasters, there is also the ongoing risk of climate change that comes from the vast emissions of greenhouse gases, primarily CO{sub 2}, from the burning of fossil fuels. The implementation of CO{sub 2} capture and storage (CCS) will help mitigate CO{sub 2} emissions from fossil fuel energy, but it also carries with it HSE risks. In my personal interactions with the public and with students, the main concern voiced is whether CO{sub 2} could leak out of the deep reservoirs into which it is injected and rise up out of the ground, smothering people and animals at the ground surface. Another concern expressed is that CO{sub 2} pipelines could fail and cause similar gaseous plumes of CO{sub 2}. The widespread concerns about CO{sub 2} leaking out over the ground surface may be inspired by events that have happened within natural systems in equatorial Africa, in Indonesia, and in Italy. Researchers have been investigating a wide variety of HSE risks of geologic CO{sub 2} storage for some time and have determined that wells are the main potential pathways for significant leakage from the deep subsurface. I discuss the acute HSE risks of CO{sub 2} leakage through wells and from pipelines, and compare the behavior of failures in CO{sub 2} wells and pipelines with oil and gas analogues from which most of our experience derives.

Can Metal–Organic Framework Materials Play a Useful Role in Large‐Scale Carbon Dioxide Separations?

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are a fascinating class of crystalline nanoporous materials that can be synthesized with a diverse range of pore dimensions, topologies, and chemical functionality. As with other well-known nanoporous materials, such as activated carbon and zeolites, MOFs have potential uses in a range of chemical separation applications because of the possibility of selective adsorption and diffusion of molecules in their pores. We review the current state of knowledge surrounding the possibility of using MOFs in large-scale carbon dioxide separations. There are reasons to be optimistic that MOFs may make useful contributions to this important problem, but there are several critical issues for which only very limited information is available. By identifying these issues, we provide what we hope is a path forward to definitively answering the question posed in our title.

Modeling the Fluid Phase Behavior of Carbon Dioxide in Aqueous Solutions of Monoethanolamine Using Transferable Parameters with the SAFT-VR Approach

The current method of choice for large-scale carbon dioxide (CO2) capture is amine-based chemisorption, typically in packed columns, with the benchmark solvent being aqueous solutions of a primary alkanolamine: monoethanolamine (MEA). In this contribution, we use the statistical associating fluid theory for potentials of variable range (SAFT-VR) to describe the fluid phase behavior of MEA + H2O + CO2 mixtures. The physical chemistry of CO2 in aqueous solutions of amines is highly complex owing to the chemical equilibria between the various species that are formed in solution at ambient conditions. We explicitly consider the multifunctional nature of MEA and, in so doing, are able to represent accurately the thermodynamic properties and phase equilibria of this highly nonideal mixture over a wide range of temperatures, pressures, and compositions. MEA is modeled as an associating chain molecule formed from homonuclear spherical segments with six distinct association sites incorporated to mediate the asymmetric hydrogen bonding interactions exhibited by this molecule. The models for H2O and CO2 are taken from previous work. In order to describe the chemisorption, which is the key to the CO2 capture process, two additional effective sites are incorporated on the otherwise nonassociating CO2 molecule to describe the chemical interaction between the MEA and CO2, so that the correct maximal stoichiometry of two amine molecules per CO2 molecule is retained. The vapor−liquid phase equilibria of the various binary mixtures and of the MEA + H2O + CO2 ternary mixture are accurately described with our approach, including the degree of absorption of CO2 in the solvent for wide ranges of temperature and pressure. This suggests that the underlying complexity of the chemical equilibria associated with this system are correctly captured by the model and provides great promise for the modeling of the overall process of CO2 capture.

Training carbon management engineers: why new educational capacity is the single biggest hurdle for geologic CO2 storage

Abstract Implementing geologic storage of carbon dioxide at a scale large enough to make a difference will require an industry of magnitude comparable to the current oil and gas industry (Bryant [1]; Orr [2]). Such an enterprise will require substantial human capital, but recognition of this need has been largely missing from discussions of GHG mitigation. To design, build, implement, optimize, troubleshoot, monitor and regulate large-scale carbon dioxide storage projects will require subsurface engineers. The same technologies that apply to hydrocarbon production apply to the subsurface storage of carbon dioxide. Thus one might naturally expect to hire petroleum engineering (PE) graduates to staff a carbon storage industry. We argue that it is unrealistic to depend on PE graduates to staff the carbon storage industry, for three reasons: (i) continued large demand for hydrocarbons is unlikely to abate; (ii) a demographic gap in the oil and gas industry will continue to place an extraordinary premium on new graduates; and (iii) existing PE departments in the US and abroad are already operating at or above capacity. In short, there are neither classrooms nor faculty sufficient to educate enough petroleum engineers for the petroleum industry. Even if there were, it would be difficult for an emerging carbon storage industry to compete for graduates with oil and gas companies. We advocate that the solution to this manpower problem is building new educational infrastructure. We propose a prototype program based on an existing accredited multidisciplinary degree program at The University of Texas at Austin, known as Geosystems Engineering and Hydrogeology. Offered jointly by the Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering Department and the Department of Geological Sciences, this program combines the fundamentals of petroleum engineering with the subsurface architecture emphasis of geology and the environmental perspective of hydrogeology. The latter is salient given the priority of protecting groundwater resources during geologic storage. With modest redesign of the curriculum but with substantial expansion of classrooms, laboratories and faculty, we argue that the program would be able to graduate significant numbers of “carbon management engineers” within six years. The problem of timing is particularly difficult. The lead time to develop such a program is long, even when starting from an existing degree program. A geologic storage industry will not begin until a regulatory framework and some form of carbon market or price are established. Ensuring that the carbon management industry is not starved of talent will thus require a rare combination of shared vision amongst university administrators, government agencies and industry.

CO in Alberta-A Vision of the Future

Abstract An exciting new future of large-scale carbon dioxide enhanced oil recovery awaits Alberta's depleted oil fields. This paper presents the potential and how the necessary infrastructure could be developed. Such an infrastructure currently exists in the Permian Basin of West Texas and Southeast New Mexico, where over 28.17 106m3/day of carbon dioxide is injected for enhanced oil recovery. A number of factors have come, or are coming, together to form the environment where a comparable infrastructure may be possible in Alberta. A scoping evaluation of carbon dioxide sources and locations, reservoir locations, potential oil recovery, and capital costs to develop the infrastructure is carried out. The factors leading to a large-scale carbon dioxide industry are compared to the factors in place during the 1970s and 1980s, when most of the hydrocarbon miscible floods were initiated in Alberta. Finally, conclusions are drawn regarding the viability of the infrastructure proposed in this paper. Introduction Carbon dioxide (CO2), a simple molecule composed of one carbon and two oxygen atoms, has been the subject of interest by the oil industry for over 25 years. Original interest was in its potential for enhanced oil recovery (EOR). More recently, that interest has been eclipsed by its perceived role in global climate change, and the potentially negative business and economic implications of emitting CO2 into the atmosphere. A win-win situation could develop by constructing a province-wide infrastructure for CO2 collection and transmission that will address both interests: increased light oil recovery through EOR, and reduced CO2 emissions. Factors leading in this direction include:Declining reserves of light-medium oil. Alberta has enjoyed a long history of light oil production. However, new discoveries are not replacing production and reserves are declining, as illustrated in Figure 1. Current reserves are now approximately one third of proved reserves in 1977.FIGURE 1: Historical light-medium oil reserves for the province of Alberta. (Available in full paper)Environmental issues related to CO2 emissions into the atmosphere. There is an increasing concern by the public and government about controlling CO2 emissions to the atmosphere. The government of Canada showed its concern on the subject by signing the Kyoto Accord, which, if ratified, will commit Canada to reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to 94% of 1990 levels by 2012.Buoyant natural gas markets. Use of natural gas in hydrocarbon miscible floods (HCMF) was feasible in the past due to lack of markets and low prices. Current markets and prices most likely preclude its use in miscible flooding.Application of a Proven Technology. CO2 flooding has been used commercially since 1972 in the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico, when injection began into the SACROC and North Cross projects(1). By early 1998 there were over 40 CO2 projects operating in the Permian Basin, with total CO2 injection of 28.17 106m3/d and incremental production of 23,850 m3/day. Factors that led to the success of CO2 in the Permian Basin include:Well developed CO2 infrastructureHigh quality, high productivity CO2 sources