Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has received $3
million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act dollars to capture and
transport 1 million tons of carbon dioxide from Bay Area power plants and
inject it more than two miles underground.
Laboratory researchers will collaborate with Lawrence
Berkeley and C6 Resources, a Shell Oil Company affiliate, on the carbon
sequestration project.
Geomodel of southwestern U.S. region including wave propagation modeling.
The goal of the LLNL project is to capture carbon dioxide at
its source, preferably coal burning power plants, and transport it via a
pipeline to the Central Valley where it will
be injected two miles underground into a saline formation.
The lab project is one of 12 projects that last week
received $21.6 million in ARRA funds from Energy Secretary Steven Chu.
LLNL principal investigator Elizabeth Burton said LLNL will
address the risk elements of the project including assessing seismic hazards in
the area and from there, build a regional geological model. The model will
support large-scale pressure response and brine migration simulations, which
will be performed by LBNL.
“This project provides the Laboratory with an opportunity to
test and transfer decision-making tools in support of the ARRA's objectives of
greenhouse gas reduction," Burton
said. “Our overreaching goal is to deploy carbon capture and sequestration
(CCS) safely as a greenhouse gas emissions reduction technology.”
LLNL researchers will be able to provide important
information to support permitting of the project and to address public concerns
about the seismic safety of such a project in California.
This work builds on similar efforts by LLNL in support of
the West Coast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (WESTCARB) Phase III
injection site. WESTCARB is a collaborative research project bringing
scientists and engineers together from more than 80 public agencies, private
companies, and nonprofits to identify and validate the best regional
opportunities for keeping CO2 out of the atmosphere.
WESTCARB is one of seven research partnerships co-funded by
the Department of Energy to characterize regional carbon sequestration
opportunities and conduct technology validation field tests.
“The California project
provides LLNL with an opportunity to vet these tools at a second site and in a
very different geologic setting,” Burton
said.
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Three-dimensional geomodel developed for the southern San Joaquin Valley in support of pressure response simulation studies for the Kimberlina CCS project risk assessment.
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During Phase I, Lab scientists will collect data and assess
the potential seismic scenarios and modify LLNL's wave propagation codes to
address other risks. In Phase 2, LLNL will develop the geomodel and make the
model available for risk assessment efforts by LLNL and other project partners.
The Laboratory has been an active partner in several of
DOE's regional carbon sequestration partnerships. In particular, LLNL
scientists also participate in several CCS projects internationally, including
In Salah and Weyburn. LLNL has strong expertise in the subsurface elements of
geologic carbon storage, including site characterization, monitoring,
verification and accounting, geomechanical and geochemical impacts and in
simulation and risk assessment.
In addition, LLNL has extensive experience in developing regional
3D geomodels for CCS using some of the Lab’s largest supercomputers.
“To create a model of this size, LLNL will leverage work
done close to the site by the project developer, but also the 3-D models
generated for the Bay Area by the USGS, the Laboratory and others,” said Julio
Friedmann, head of the Lab’s Carbon Management Program.
Information that will be included in the model will include
boreholes from the oil and gas industry and geologic information in the
Montezuma Hills area (a small range of low-elevation hills at the northern
banks of the Sacramento River Delta in Solano County)
from developed oil and gas fields and wildcat exploration wells drilled prior
to 1980.
Friedmann said the laboratory has extensive experience in
the regulatory and public perception issues associated with CCS, and have
worked with policymakers, regulators, and other stakeholders at the national
and state levels on these issues. “This project is an opportunity for us to
show the nation that carbon sequestration can work at a regional level,” he
said.
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