Regional Partner Announces Plans for Carbon
Storage Project Using CO2 Captured from Coal-Fired Power Plant
DOE Fossil Energy NEWSALERT - July 20, 2009
Southern Company and the Southeast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership
(SECARB), one of seven members of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)
Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnerships program, have announced plans to
store carbon dioxide (CO2) captured from an existing coal-fired power plant.
The project represents a major step toward demonstrating the viability of
integrating carbon capture and storage to mitigate climate change.
This storage project, located in the Citronelle Oil Field north of Mobile,
Ala., will inject CO2 captured from Alabama Power's Plant Barry into a deep
saline reservoir 9,000 feet beneath the surface. Beginning in 2011 and
continuing for at least 4 years, up to 150,000 tons of CO2 per year—the
equivalent of emissions from 25 megawatts of Plant Barry's generating
capacity—will be captured at the plant, transported via pipeline, and
injected into the saline formation, which has oil-bearing formations above
and below. A thorough monitoring process will be used to track the movement
of the injected CO2 and ensure that it is safely and permanently stored.
SECARB, led by Southern States Energy Board, and the Electric Power Research
Institute (EPRI), which is coordinating this CO2 storage effort, selected
the test site because it is representative of similar saline formations that
are believed to have great potential for carbon storage. A conservative
estimate by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has estimated the
storage capacity for the formations—which underlie an area of approximately
46,000 square miles in southern Alabama and Mississippi, the Florida
Panhandle, and Louisiana—at 10 billion metric tons of CO2.
The Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership program was initiated by the
Office of Fossil Energy in 2003 as a response to geographic differences in
fossil fuel use and storage potential across the United States. The seven
regional partnerships form the centerpiece of national efforts to develop
the infrastructure and knowledge base needed to accelerate these
technologies on the path to commercialization. The program is managed by the
National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL).
The partnerships span 43 states, three Indian nations, and four Canadian
provinces and include more than 350 organizations. Collectively, the
partnerships represent regions that encompass 97 percent of U.S. coal-fired
CO2 emissions, 97 percent of U.S. industrial CO2 emissions, 96 percent of
the United States' total land mass, and essentially all the geologic
sequestration sites in the United States potentially available for carbon
storage.
SECARB covers 13 southeastern states (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia,
Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee,
Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia) and includes than 100 partners and
stakeholders. CO2 injection at the Citronelle Oil Field is the second
component of SECARB’s two-part, large-scale injection study which is
exploring the potential for carbon storage in geological formations of the
Southeast.
Each of the seven partnerships is conducting at least one large-volume CO2
storage field test as part of the development phase of the partnerships
program. These large-volume tests will promote understanding of injectivity,
capacity, and storability of CO2 in the various geologic formations
identified by the partnerships. Results and assessments from these efforts
will promote commercialization efforts for future carbon capture and storage
projects in North America.
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