Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
8/28/2015
BILLINGS, Mont. —The ability to put captured carbon to viable and valuable use is integral to the success of carbon capture utilization and storage efforts, representatives from the national and state governments as well as industry said here this week at the U.S. -China Clean Coal Industry Forum.
Treating CO2 as a waste product of coal is the wrong mind frame with which to approach the topic, Wyoming Gov. Matthew Mead said: “We think about it as ‘we’ve got coal and then we have this waste. How do we deal with this waste?’ I think the better question is, ‘we’ve got coal. How do we use all of the coal?”
Mead went on to build a metaphor, which carried throughout the forum, relating the use of coal to the butchering of a cow. “I think for a long period of time with coal we’ve been butchering a cow, throwing the hide to the side, and now we’re saying ‘what do we do with all these hides?’ The same is true with coal. I think there is great opportunity for coal, the use of CO2, enhanced oil recovery is certainly one thing we know is readily available,” Mead said.
Many speakers highlighted the potential for use of C02 in enhanced oil recovery, including Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, who noted that the process is widely used within his state. Bullock also cited the EOR component of SaskPower’s Boundary Dam CCS project, located in Saskatchewan, Canada, the world’s first operational commercial-scale CCS project. “It emphasizes the need for the leaders in industry and government with our respective countries to say ‘we all can get there as well,’ because there are some real value propositions by employing the technology,” Bullock said, referencing the success of the Boundary Dam project, which has exceeded developers’ expectations, producing a purer stream of CO2 than anticipated.
While no commercial-scale CCS project is yet in operation in the U.S. many are approaching fruition, including Southern Co.’s Kemper County Energy Facility, located in Mississippi. Once completed, the project’s captured CO2 will also be used for EOR, which developers felt was the only viable application. “For the moment as a commercial concern, the only large volume opportunity really is EOR to do that, but we support the notion of trying to find additional options,” Kerry Bowers, president and CEO of Southern Generation Technologies, said during a panel discussion.
While EOR remains the most prevalent form of CO2 use, it is not the only form. Skyonic Corp., for example, has developed a system to convert CO2 into baking soda. Efforts like these are supported by the Department of Energy, said David Mohler, deputy assistant secretary for clean coal and carbon management within the DOE Office of Fossil Energy. “I have kind of a personal mission to focus on how do we create the right portfolio of value added [options] around CO2 to really enable us to meet our objectives and have it done in an economical way,” he said.
