Scientists seek safe carbon dioxide storage for 'greener' power generation (w/ Video)

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced plans to fund research at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) School of Engineering on technologies that would help reduce greenhouse gas emissions through the capture and permanent safe storage, or sequestration, of carbon dioxide (CO2). The project is in collaboration with Southern Company, the parent company of Alabama Power.

Funded by the DOE through the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the UAB research has two principal goals. First, it will help identify the geological formations that are best and safest for the sequestration of CO2 deep underground. Second, UAB will help train the workforce for implementation of CO2 capture and storage by involving graduate and undergraduate students in the research and introducing into its curriculum an advanced course on coal combustion and gasification, climate change and carbon sequestration.

"Southern Company's involvement enables our students and research team access to crucial industry resources, operations and information," said Peter Walsh, Ph.D., a professor of engineering at UAB. "We are delighted to partner with Southern Company on a project that enables us to contribute to a solution of one of the most interesting, important and complex issues of our time."

FLV player

Richard Esposito, a UAB engineering Ph.D. candidate and a principal geologist with UAB research collaborator Southern Company, discusses carbon capture and storage technology. Credit: UAB

The capture and underground sequestration of CO2 includes separation of CO2 from combustion products at fossil fuel power plants, pipeline transport and injection into underground geological formations. The geological formations used for sequestration will have been previously characterized by geologic drilling investigations to be permanent storage sites.

For a geological formation to be viable as a storage location, a layer of permeable rock capable of holding injected CO2 must be present. These rock layers must be topped by impermeable cap rocks or seals that prevent the release or escape of the injected CO2.

Proposed geological carbon sequestration sites are very similar to the natural geological conditions that trap oil and natural gas deposits. There are already numerous naturally occurring deposits of CO2 trapped in the earth's geology throughout the Southeast.

As partners in the project, Southern Company will supply UAB with geological core samples and access to pilot injection sites throughout the U.S. Southeast that are being sponsored by the DOE.

UAB researchers and their student assistants will then verify the rock samples' ability to safely and permanently confine injected CO2. In collaboration with Southern Company's own geologists and engineers, UAB will help identify the rock layers that would best serve as cap rock to seal against upward migration or loss of injected CO2.

"Through the classroom and with research experience we hope to generate interest in carbon capture and storage technologies and eventually develop employees who will design, build and operate the equipment," said Richard Esposito, a Southern Company principal geologist who is also a Ph.D. candidate in the UAB School of Engineering.

"This technology is something that all fossil-fuel-based energy providers will potentially be required to deploy by 2020 in an effort to comply with proposed carbon legislation. Southern Company and other utilities will need a well-trained workforce to commercially deploy the technology and the partnership with UAB in this project will help get us there," Esposito said.

The DOE grant for the UAB CO2 storage research in conjunction with Southern Company is $299,940 over three years. Forty-two other universities received funds for similar research projects aimed at bolstering CO2 capture and storage practices throughout the country. Click here for a link to the DOE statement on the UAB funding.

Source: University of Alabama at Birmingham (news : web)

   

• defunctdiety - Nov 09, 2009
  • Rank: 4 / 5 (1)
  Interesting that the gov't decides to put Stimulus $$$ towards research that, if it bares it's sterile fruit, will in the future actually depress our economy (if industry must buy CO2 controls, industry must raise prices, standard of living goes up from the ground up).
  
  I thought the idea of Stimulus was to see immediate or at least near-term return? If we're not going to get anything productive from this Stimulus Package to improve the economy NOW, at least put this 300,000 towards renewable energies which will actually benefit the People and the economy SOMEDAY.
  
  Nah (and this goes for most Stimulus projects), much better to create money (inflation) and create temporary, zero-return jobs that have no profitable product.
  
  What can it hurt to send fabricated money into a vacuum (people will be saving most of it, due to toilet economy/job market) with no foreseeable future return? What's a few hundred billion more in pure inflation?
  
  Guess we'll see. You're welcome future Generations.
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