The Death of Capt Carbon Sequester

We are sorry to formally announce the death of Capt. Carbon Sequester.  He passed away late last night after sucking on the tailpipe of an idling car that some irresponsible person left running in an attempt to filter the carbon emissions through his body.  After several minutes of mouth-to-tailpipe, he had fallen unconscious and later was determined dead.  We give great thanks for his concerns about the environment and hope others will do their best to preserve our great land..... with common sense of course.

Has the world's largest carbon-capture project sprung a leak?

That was the charge placed earlier this year by Jane and Cameron Kerr.  The Kerr's are a Canadian couple who live near the Weyburn oil field in Saskatchewan.  The Weyburn field is responsible for nearly 16 million metric tons of compressed carbon dioxide that have been pumped into a reservoir deep underground for permanent storage, since early 2000.  At a news conference, the couple revealed a report by a geological consulting firm that appeared to link elevated levels of carbon dioxide on their property to gas from the reservoir.  Addressing the Canadian news media, they described a pond on their property “fizzing like soda pop,” and mysterious late-night explosions.  They also stated waking up to the discovery of dead animals that appeared to be asphyxiated.  They declared that they had abandoned the property out of fear for their health.

The entire story has postulated questions among the interested whether the entire prospect of storing carbon dioxide underground was unworkable.  “What started as a series of worrisome problems on a rural Saskatchewan property has now raised serious questions about the safety of carbon sequestration and storage, a technology that has drawn billions in spending from governments and industry, which have promoted it as a salve to Canada’s growth in greenhouse-gas emissions,” an article in The Globe and Mail newspaper said.  Not so fast, some top geologists say.  Sally Benson, a geologist at Stanford University, described the report, by Paul Lafleur, president of Petro-Find Geochem, a Saskatoon-based geological consulting firm, as far from comprehensive and said that other causes unconnected to the Weyburn project could be the source of the Kerrs’ problems.  “It’s a very short report and it’s a very complex issue,” Dr. Benson said.  Susan D. Hovorka, a geologist at the University of Texas at Austin, went further, saying that Mr. Fleur’s declarations that a firm link had been found between carbon dioxide on the Kerrs’ property and the storage project were “misleading.”  “He may be certain, but he’s wrong about his certainty,” Dr. Hovorka said. “His confidence is not justified by the data.”

The Petroleum Research Technology Center, a Saskatchewan-based research group overseeing the Weyburn project, has also issued a report strongly rebutting the consultant’s report.  An independent investigation of the Kerr property has already been proposed by IPAC-CO2, a carbon-storage research institute, and both Cenovus and a lawyer for the Kerr family have signaled their approval.  “It certainly warrants looking into,” Dr. Benson said. “If there’s damage occurring, a remedy should be made.”

Though the results of this story are still inconclusive, it brings some more attention to the CCS scene.  An interesting quote I saw last week kind of got my attention and made me want to include it in this post.  It went along these lines, "Attention, no matter what type, is still attention."  This might not be the type of attention CCS is looking for, but maybe at this point CCS will take any attention it can get.

Relating CCS and Fukushima

In a recent article, The Nuclear Effect on Carbon Capture Plans, by Alessandra Migliaccio and Jeremy van Loon, the authors explore the idea that Fukushima could speed up the process of CCS.  They present the fact that "Germany halted 25 percent of its nuclear capacity and may close its oldest plants permanently after the Green party surged in Mar. 27 state elections. Switzerland shelved plans for new reactors, the U.K. said it may delay plans, and Italy is holding off on its newly launched nuclear program," as evidence that European countries may now try harder to accelerate the development of energy production that cuts down on carbon emissions.

Currently, the UK government allocates the most money towards funding projects on carbon capture and storage.  Its 10.5 billion dollars is more than the United States (5.1 billion) and Canada (4.9 billion) combined.  Though some funding is there, the pace of the projects has been slow, and even though 10.5 billion is a sizeable sum of money, cost is still a problem.  ''Capturing carbon is really expensive,'' says Age Kristensen, vice-president of technology at Statoil in Calgary. ''It's just not economic.'' Statoil is the world's largest CCS operator, with three projects in Europe and Africa. Its Salah (Algeria) project injects about one million tons of carbon dioxide a year below the Saharan desert, using solvents to separate carbon from natural gas.

Sauro Pasini, head of Enel's research and development department, says CCS testing seeks cheaper, more efficient ways to clean emissions and cut costs from about €90 per captured ton of CO2 to about €45 a ton or less, still far higher than the current €16 a ton for carbon permits trading in Europe.  CCS skeptics such as Carlo Stagnaro, a researcher at think tank Istituto Bruno Leoni, say the cost of CCS needs to be €20 or €30 for it to be economically viable. "Coal is the cheapest energy source ... and what do we do? We make it the most expensive by spending loads on cleaning it up. ... We could spend the money on other things, on safer nuclear," he says.

The article then goes on to state that coal demand is seen as rising as much as 20% by the year 2020.  That is one reason CCS might be worth continuing they speculate.  They state the bottom line of the article is that efforts to capture and store carbon emissions while costly, may gain momentum after the Fukushima disaster. 

While this may be true, they are acknowleding the extremely high cost.  They communicate only a speculation that frames the issue for the expansion of CCS.  Overall this article is hopeful with respect to CCS, but does not correlate any hard information one way or the other.

Yeah... I can eat a few more pieces

The third piece of the carbon cake deals with pipelines, compressing the carbon and finally sending it into the reservoirs.  We have theoretically built the expensive pipelines at this point and are pumping the captured CO2 to the injection site.  I don't want to talk about pipelines too much, but there is always the possibility of leaks and degradation.  Once a pipeline is built, it will hopefully last a long time and not require too much maintenance.  Historically, long pipelines have held up pretty well, but eventually all require some maintenance.  If the pipeline is left unattended or not properly analyzed often major problems can occur. 

One example is the Alaskan pipeline.  In an article by the New York Times in 2006, oil spill raises concerns on pipeline maintenance, our good friend BP was accused of improperly maintaining the pipeline.  This negligence resulted in over 200,000 gallons of crude being spilled.  BP denied that it was trying to cut costs by reducing the maintenance schedule to the pipeline, but company workers were recorded as advising BP to keep up the maintenance on several occasions.  It was said afterward that "we know that this could have been prevented," by Marc Kovac, a United Steelworkers Union rep which represents workers at the BP facility. 

Back to compressing the carbon dioxide though.  Unfortunately, capturing CO2 via CCS is energy intensive due to thermal energy requirements, and compressing the CO2 only adds to this extra cost.  We already established that nearly 25% of the energy produced from coal is used in the operating and capturing process, and after combining this with the additional transportation and compression costs, the amount of energy consumed from original production is closer to 40%, yikes!

Getting the CO2 into the reservoir is actually not that difficult.  Drilling platforms are built with sufficient equipment to pump CO2 at controlled rates. 

The reservoirs themselves are actually the bigger problem.  Several coal plants exist very far distances from potential reservoirs and therefore fall out of the category for a potential CCS due to extra costs from transport.  Along with potential reservoirs, leaks are always the biggest concern.  Leaks of carbon dioxide could lead to harmful effects in the surrounding areas.  The largest recent disaster caused by CO2 occurred in Cameroon, central Africa.  A volcanic crater-lake known as Nyos belched bubbles of CO2 into the still night air and the gas settled around the lake's shore, where it killed 1800 people and countless thousands of animals.  Contaminating aquifers also ranks high on the list of potential risks.  Granted this was not linked to CCS, but it shows the potential ramifications.

One of the main things that has been holding CCS back is the government.  Are they doing this on purpose or are there deeper political agendas at hand?  Get ready for some more cake.

The Cake Continued

Hmm... that piece of cake tasted a little funny, let's try another piece.  Lol, sorry I must be hungry all this cake talk.....  In the book The Weather Makers, by Tim Flannery, a book about engineering solutions to global warming, another problem holding back CCS is presented.  Tim points outthe question, once the CO2 is captured, how much is it going to cost to put it into a reservoir?  Ideally, the location would be as close as possible, yet in many potential locations for CCS around the world, the reservoirs reside several miles away.  Large costs are then inherited to build expensive pipelines.

Flannery presents an example of some problems associated with building pipelines.  If we assume that some plants are built and the CO2 is captured, for every tonne of anthracite [coal] burned, 3.7 tonnes of CO2 is generated.  If this voluminous waste could be pumped back into the ground below the power station it would not matter as much, but the rocks that produce coal are not often useful for storing CO2, which means that the gas much be transported.  In the case of Australia's Hunter Valley coal mines, it needs to be conveyed over Australia's Great Dividing Range and hundreds of kilometres to the west. [pipelines cost about $1 million per mile, more when terrain is rough and uneven.]  There are also many risks involved with installing a pipeline and depositing the transported carbon.  Tomorrow's piece of the carbon cake will touch on these topics.

Often, private investments cannot cover the fees and expenses associated with building these pipelines.  In this light, several potential locations for CCS become unusable without government aid.  The government aid to back a project of this magnitude is also hard to come by.  Several cases have went up for review and several projects have been put on hold or not given the go ahead.  This will be examined in following posts.

Hopefully in the future after some of these problems are introduced, the solutions can be explored in this blog.  In some cases investigation of the solutions prove that some solutions contain big problems themselves, unfortunately. 

Stay tuned as we attempt to eat the whole cake... we are fat Americans afterall. 

Have your carbon cake and eat it too!..... not quite

Carbon sequestration seems like a good deal.  Have your carbon cake and eat it too.  What a deal right? In principle you capture CO2 emissions at the source before they are released into the atmosphere, compress them until they become liquid and then inject them in deep underground holes.  What could be simpler?  It certainly sounds like a good tool to fight global warming while enjoying the Earth's huge fossil fuel reserves.

I used to think that it would indeed be one of the many solutions used to save ourselves from catastrophic climate change, but not anymore.  In fact, I now think that it might be a counter-productive red herring in most cases.  What has made me change my mind?  A series of problems that are incurred along the whole process of CCS. Read on, please.

One of the biggest problems with the idea of CCS is capturing the carbon itself.  One of the main ways of executing this capture takes place in the smokestacks of coal plants. 

The stream of CO2 emitted from a smokestack is relatively dilute though, making CO2 capture time consuming and unrealistic.  Also, the coal industry has staked its future on a new process known as coal gasification.  These new power plants resemble chemical works more than conventional coal-fired power plants.  In them, water and oxygen are mixed with the coal to create carbon monoxide and hydrogen.  The hydrogen is used as a fuel source, while the carbon monoxide is converted to a concentrated stream of CO2.  These plants are not cheap to run: around one-quarter of the energy they produce is consumed just in keeping them operating.  All indications suggest that building them on a commercial scale will be extremely expensive and that it will take decades to make a significant contribution to power production.  So.... about 25% of the energy they make is used just to keep them operating, they are more expensive, and it will take decades before they make a significant contribution.....Hmmmm. 

The problems continue... stay tuned for another major problem in tomorrow's blog entry

Video Blog: Let's wrap this blog up

VideoBlog

Well... is carbon sequestration even going to do anything?

After watching a video in class several weeks ago I began to question if carbon sequestration is truly a viable answer to solving the global climate change crisis as I had initially once thought.  It was presented in the video, (sorry I can't recall the title at the moment but will try and find out after completing this post) that global temperature plots alongside atmospheric carbon levels show the opposite of what most people would assume.  Based on reports from the media and just general heresay I, along with the majority of the population, I assume, would believe that the temperature curve would follow the carbon curve throughout the time cycle.  Alas, this was presented as completely opposite in the video.  The "experts" were showing graphs in which the carbon levels were following the temperature curve almost exactly, but at an approximate two hundred year gap.  The evidence for the gap was that it takes so long to heat the world's oceans and cool them down because of their enormous capacity that it takes about two hundred years for the carbon curve to follow.  This was startiling information for me.  It opened up a few ideas in my head that others have already discovered and have been presenting for some time.  The main idea is that global warming is not anthropocentric.  In other words, human beings are not the center of cause for the global warming that is occuring.

One rather provocative blogpost I came across discussed this.  The title of the blog is "Get Real, People!" so you have an idea from the title that it can be a little bit of a rant, but some points are well explained and analyzed.  The blogpost I focused on was Temperature vs Carbon Dioxide Connection.  The author breaks down some information concerning the temperature/carbon dioxide curve and makes some statements using analogies that put things into perspective.  He also touches on the uncertainty of climate change research which I think is another huge issue in itself.  Lastly, he comments on how global warming has created its own funding by scare tactics and says we should stop giving our money to these types of research.... interesting.

Carbon Cycles Miscalculated?

In a recent blog post on Mongabay.com, a site that promotes community awareness on environmental news, it was presented that a paper published by Science has addressed the issue that previous means of measuring the planets overall carbon cycle emissions and absorptions may not be up to snuff.  It has been suggested by the paper that natural emissions of methane and carbon dioxide from streams, lakes, and rivers are not even  accounted for in the previous measurements of carbon cycle totals.  This potentially represents a "major accounting error," supposedly on the line of 1.4 billion metric tons, yikes.  Still, these numbers are estimates.  They remain estimates because we apparently haven't had the proper means to measure, or think to measure, such volumes.  The paper urges more precise measurements because conversation of conservation and policy making highly depend on these figures.  Hmmm... yes, important stuff.

The blog post was informative, yet did not take a stance on the issue, it was merely written to inform the public.  For a reaction I explored the comments.  Pleasantly I found not outrage but comments that were more of a problem solving mentality.  Though the mentality did not include any formal answers, it is nice to see the support for moving forward with the issue at hand.  The link to the blog can be found here. and the comments. I did take the chance to comment, it awaits the approval from the site.  If it does not make it on, I will post it... but it was appropriate and really has no reason not to make it....

Enhanced Reservoir Modeling Developed by Berkley Could Speed Up Future of CCS

Nearly all of today's mathematical modelling is done by computers.  Rightly so, no need to be a generation of pencil pushers in this super computing age.  Most people that have any experience with mathematical modelling know, the details involved mean everything.  Plainly, the system inputs highly coincide with the system outputs.  Even more simply, garbage in = garbage out.  Scientists therefore spend an enormous amount of time trying to develop more and more detailed models in order to achieve better results from their model simulations.  Berkley Labs have just recently developed a simulation technique called adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) to combat existing modelling problems.  The Berkley article can be reviewed here.

Called Porous Media AMR, or PMAMR, the code concentrates computing power on more active areas of a simulation by breaking it into finer parts (higher resolution), while calculating less active, less critical portions in coarser parts (lower resolution). The size of the chunks, and thus the resolution, automatically shifts as the model changes, ensuring the most active, critical processes are also the most highly resolved. This ability to automatically shift focus makes AMR a powerful tool for modeling phenomena that start small and grow over time

This statement essentially says that modelling techniques can now focus on smaller "chunks" of modelling data and set more importance upon them.  The areas of high resolution are usually where more important data is being collected and therefore the model should favor those areas of data.  Being that these areas are of high resolution, this means more specific input details can be made about these "chunks" and therefore better output information can be collected.  How does this apply to CCS?

This new modelling technique may have developed a better simulation code to model CO2 injection into underground saline reservoirs!  Saline reservoirs account for the largest potential storage capacity for injected CO2 on the planet.  The new software developed by the Berkeley team was able to provide a much finer grained model than that of a traditional geological simulation code, and was able to generate a 3D model of the C02 in solution over time.  The eventual goal is then to be able to use the physical characteristics of a particular aquifer to predict how much CO2 it can accommodate.

This process stands the potential to help or hurt CCS.  If it can be proven through models that CO2 will stay in the designated aquifers without any leakage occurring, the case for CCS is greatly improved.  However, if the new models show that CO2 has the potential to leak in certain reservoirs, a stronger case against CCS will build.  If the modelling goes in favor of CCS, hopefully this will speed processes to get CCS up for review from a legislative standpoint.

Visual Learing

In an effort to connect to the audience in another way, a visual way, I will post a few videos concerning the topic at hand - carbon sequestration.

The first video is another general introduction to carbon sequestration, yet also touches on the involvement of the Department of Energy in the movement to reduce green house gases.  In combination with renewables, and increased efficiency, it is projected that a great reduction in overall emissions can be made.



The second video touches on a different form of sequestration, and that is terrestrial.



Blog Self Interview

Welcome to Captain Sequesters self interview... this is hard, yet hopefully will be insightful for mainly me, and translate to better blog posts for you the reader.  First, just to break the tension of a self interview i would like to post a video of another self interview, probably the greatest of all time.

Now if you can't appriciate what was just done right there... we obviously have different tastes in humor.  Nonetheless, on a more serious note, i will aim to answer a few questions that are directed at the blog. 
"Captain Sequester, what is the purpose of this blog?"
"Please, call me Captain Carbon Sequester.  Well good sir, captain, if you can call yourself that, you would know from reading the introduction post that this blog is focused on the subject of carbon sequestration.  It is the goal of the blog to present past and current information, expand public knowledge, and create a general forum for discussion on the subject"
"Captain will do just fine thank you.  Who is the imagined audience(s) of this blog?"
"Well Captain, the audience is not imaginary at all, (laughs) but seriously I started this blog in order to reach out to a select group of individuals, mainly class LAIS498DD at the Colorado School of Mines, woot woot, and those that show any remote interest in carbon sequestration at all.  There was the selected crowd, but hopefully the bounds are endless"
"Just like the quipy jokes you have I'm sure, Arrrghghhmmmmm, excuse me.... Have your posts matched up with your purpose? Also, who/what might you be overlooking in defining your purpose and audience in this way?"

Learning to engage; an informal science

Given that this blog does not aim to influence science policy directly, and attempts to avoid the deficit model, this blog is considered an informal dialogue.  Sarah Davies, one of many authors in the book Investigating Science Communication in the Information Age, points out that informal dialogues mostly do not even attempt to connect to policy or have large-scale outcomes.  That is moderately true for the purpose of this blog.  However, she points out that rather than to aim at large outcomes, informal dialogues should concentrate on outcomes and impacts on individuals.  That statement is profound, and has lead me to redirect my thoughts concerning this blog.  I need to connect with the people more, encourage the dialogue, and give people information that will lead to opinions and discussion, maybe even debate!  In this context, WE can reconceptualize informal dialogue to having mutual, individual learning as its purpose.  Better attention to the new informal dialogue to follow!

Thank you,
Cpt. Carbon Sequester

Framing an issue at hand

The largest volume of carbon sequestration currently occurs in the form of geologic sequestration.  In this form, carbon dioxide is injected into depleted oil and gas reservoirs, unmineable coal seams, and underground saline formations.  These reservoirs represent a strong majority of underground storage capability, and the capacity volumes necessary to make a difference in the reduction of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.  However, it must be pointed out that the present form of injecting carbon dioxide has not taken place as a means of purposely reducing global carbon dioxide levels, but as a form of enhanced energy production.

            The thought of injecting carbon dioxide into the ground to reduce greenhouse gas emissions seems counterproductive and dangerous to some people.  Why pay high operational costs to inject the carbon dioxide?  Many think the money would be better spent cleaning up industrial processes.  Skeptics also point out that reservoir capacity calculations are estimations and companies can never possibly know the exact volume of gas that can be put into the reservoir.  Worst of all, the gas could potentially migrate into aquifers and contaminate drinking water and further harm the environment.  These are all fair dissertations, but a closer look is needed.

            Carbon dioxide has been injected for decades into oil and gas reservoirs as an enhanced oil recovery technique.  The gas is pumped into the formation and remains in the reservoir to provide an extra drive mechanism to produce increased amounts of oil.  This method represents an opening to sequester carbon at an overall low net cost.  The cost is considered low due in part to the great profit margins recovered from oil and gas production.  The carbon dioxide injected into the reservoir is well documented, and as long as the initial pressure of the reservoir is not exceeded, theoretical knowledge indicates that the reservoir should remain intact.  This means no formation damage should occur and leak-off volumes of gas are very minimal.  Reservoirs hold there integrity extremely well, after all they have held oil and gas for millions of years already.  Also, there has never been a proven case in which carbon dioxide leakage from an underground reservoir has had detrimental effects on the outside environment.

Introducing Carbon Sequestration

Approximately forty eight million tons of carbon dioxide was injected into the surface of the earth last year by American energy outfits alone [1].  This injection of carbon dioxide not only enhanced the production of energy, but also indirectly addressed a global issue, the rising amount of greenhouse gases in the earth’s atmosphere.  It is worldwide scientific consensus that greenhouse gases from manmade influences are becoming a problem, and carbon sequestration could be one solution to reducing overall emissions associated with climate change.  Carbon sequestration is the practice of capturing carbon dioxide that would otherwise enter the atmosphere and effectively depositing it in a reservoir for permanent storage.  Presently, carbon sequestration occurs most often in depleted oil and gas reservoirs, but is also being expanded into the scope of terrestrial and ocean related means of storage.  Historically, carbon sequestration has taken place for decades, though not in a direct effort to reduce global greenhouse gases.  It has mainly existed as a petroleum industry geo-engineering technique.  For optimists, the outlook of carbon sequestration’s ability to reduce greenhouse gases is completely positive, but skeptics point out that there are numerous existing and undeveloped challenges.  Several key issues such as cost, safety, proving storage permanence, verifying the existence of sufficient storage capacity, and proving no subsisting damage to the environment need to be resolved before carbon sequestration can be fully deployed as a global emissions control option.  Yet, with successful carbon sequestration occurring around the globe everyday, carbon sequestration remains among one of the most promising choices in potential climate change solutions.

[1]Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum.        http://www.cslforum.org/publications/documents/CSLF_inFocus_UndergroundStorage_Myth.pdf
Accessed January 26, 2011

Greetings from Captain Carbon Sequester

Hello good citizens of planet Earth!  This blog has been created on behalf of Dion Waldner (aka Captain Carbon Sequester) for the purposes of Colorado School of Mines LAIS 498DD: Communicating Science: Media and the Public.  This blog will be focused on the subject of carbon sequestration.  It is the goal of this blog to present past and current information, expand public knowledge, and create a general forum for discussion on the subject.  Please join Captain Carbon Sequester as the adventures begin.