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Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage
General Description:
CO2 geological capture-and-storage, in general terms, involves the capture, treatment (additional, as required), transportation and injection of CO2 into a suitable geological formation.
Capture:
In this process, CO2 is first captured from a suitable industrial source, such as an "off" gas stream at a petrochemical processing facility or a "flue" gas stream from a coal-fired electricity generation facility. The CO2-bearing gas stream is then treated, as required, to render it appropriate, in terms of purity, pressure and temperature, to the anticipated mode of transportation and/or intended geological storage site.
Transportation:
The CO2 is then transported to a storage site where it is injected into the selected geological formation. CO2 can be transported by means of truck, rail, pipeline or ship. However, for the relatively large quantities involved in typical commercial CO2 capture and storage projects, transportation by dedicated pipeline is currently the only practical option over land.
Storage:
Potential commercial opportunities exist to store CO2 while at the same time enhancing production in depleted oil reservoirs through enhanced oil recovery (EOR) or in unminable coal beds through enhanced coal bed methane production (ECBM). Terrestrial non-commercial storage opportunities include deep saline aquifers, salt domes and rock caverns.
CO2-Capture-and-Storage Initiative:
Under the Government of Canada's Action Plan 2000 on Climate Change, the Oil Division has overall responsibility for a Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage Initiative, which is aimed at helping to demonstrate and commercialize existing, near economic, technologies to capture, transport and store CO2 underground.
The overall objective of the Initiative is to advance the understanding of the optimal use of the capture and subsequent storage of CO2 in geological formations as a means of reducing Canada's greenhouse gas emissions, and to promote its commercialization. The most promising, close to economic, opportunities in the near term are for commercial use of CO2 are in the areas of EOR and ECBM. A goal of the CO2-Capture-and-Storage Initiative is to have seven megatonnes of CO2 put into long-term storage, by the end of fiscal year 2005-2006.
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